Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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If you wish to speak to any item on the agenda or during the public comment portion of the meeting, please fill out a speaker card. Each person addressing the board shall have three minutes to complete his or her comments on each agenda item for which he or she has filled out a card. The Chair has the discretion to determine or alter the time limits on any agenda item. The Board of County Commissioners requests that speakers appearing under the Public Comments section of the agenda limit their comments or presentations to matters relating to county business that are within the Board's control, authority, and jurisdiction.

Thank you. I would like to recognize Bishop Wells from Path Apostolic Church in Titusville. Thank you for being here, Bishop.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chair, my commissioner, and to the commission entirely and staff. Thank you for the invitation to pray. Let's all pray together. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your blessing upon America, Florida, and indeed Brevard County. We thank you for each of our commissioners, their staff, and the many men and women who serve this region. We thank you for the opportunity for civil discourse in federal, state, and local government. Right now, we invoke your blessing upon this meeting and upon every speaker and every participant. We invoke your truth, your wisdom, and your love, one for the other, throughout this meeting. And while we have the right to express and demonstrate free will, we do ask, not our will, but thy will be done on earth as in heaven. Finally, we make all these petitions and invoke all these blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Amen. Thank you so much for being here, making that drive down from Titusville. We really appreciate it. I'd like to ask everyone to stand for the pledge, and Commissioner Pritchett will lead us in the pledge. Okay. I'd like to officially call the meeting to order. And we have no minutes, but we do have a resolution presentation.

May I make a motion?

Oh, yes. Yes, we need that motion.

May I make a motion to allow Commissioner Goodson to participate by phone?

It's a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. All those in favor allowing Commissioner Goodson to participate by phone? ALL IN FAVOR SAY YAY. YAY. CARRIES UNANIMOUSLY. GOOD TO HAVE YOU HERE, COMMISSIONER. THANK YOU, SIR. SO WE HAVE IN A PRESENTATION, WE HAVE THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF THE NOVEMBER PROPERTY TAX AMENDMENT ON BOVARD COUNTY. Yes.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners. I just have a few slides that highlight a few items. The paper is attached to the agenda for further reading for the audience and for the commissioners. So let me do. Come on. It worked in practice. Well, we'll go. So what we're doing, we're being asked to... Did it come through? There we go. I'm sure that was Logan helping me. So what you have on Amendment 3 in the ballot is what we're being asked to is a vote to change the state constitution. uh... and it has impacts on the obviously would have impacts on the county of the voters vote for it uh... what a minute three will do a limit use the county property tax of the ad valorem tax which is the first line you senior tax bills it would restrict those tax revenues can only fund the core services i'm actually going to read them there on the slide But the core services would be in the new state. If this is voted upon, it would be in the state constitution. Core services can only be spent on public safety, including law enforcement, fire services and emergency medical services. They could be core service would be education and public schools, which obviously is not us. That would be the school board. uh... infrastructure including construction and maintenance of roads and bridges stormwater management other public infrastructure flood control natural resources projects bond obligations pension obligations for local government employees uh... and i'm taking a little bit of something that's mostly for cities that have uh... private pet much as a private their own pensions we use the county were under the florida retirement system and then operation and administration of counties, municipalities, constitutional officers, and other authorized government functions. And our county, when you look at that, would be the Board of County Commissioners, tax collector, sheriff, property appraiser, clerk of the courts, your court system. I think I got most of them. Oh, supervisor of elections. Those would all be included in the core services. See, Logan's taking good care of me, folks. So some notes to remember for all is with this vote, what this does is it lowers the countywide taxable value by raising your homestead exemption up to the first year to $150,000. Second year, it's going to raise it up to $250,000. And when I have the slides showing the impacts, I'll be talking about the $250,000. This And this would only apply to homesteaded properties. For the non-homesteaded properties and commercials, there's an assessed evaluation cap that they can go up to 10% in the current law. Now their increased assessed value can only go up to 5%. And then the part I want to make sure everybody knows, and it's right there on the bullet point, is just because a service is defined as a core service, that does not mean it's going to be held harmless. And I'll show you in just a minute, that includes law enforcement and fire rescue. Now I'm ready for next slide. There you go. So here's a couple of the anticipated impacts from the second year when the homestead exemption goes up to the $250,000 note. Our Parks and Recreation Department would face an $18 million loss. And I'm pointing them out because Parks and Rec, number one, receives a municipal service tax unit the voters voted upon. So they're going to lose about $7 million from the lower taxable value. And then Parks and Recreation is not defined as a core service. So the property tax we spend now, the ad valorem, we would not be able to use for Parks and Recreation. LAW ENFORCEMENT THROUGH THEIR MSTU, THEY'LL LOSE ABOUT 7 MILLION. OUR FIRE RESCUE WOULD LOSE ABOUT 6 MILLION. THE LIBRARIES IN THE 6 MILLION DOLLAR RANGE. YOU ALSO HAVE MOSQUITO CONTROL TO A LESSER EXTENT AND THE ENVIRONMENTALLY ENDANGERED LANDS. some of the services that we've currently found with our general funds will be prohibited uh... t if we won't be able to use those at the warm texas so right now we have about little over two million dollars a year going to the transit services uh... that money would disappear they use that as their match housing in human services has i just lost my number has some of the neighborhood of three point two million dollars They use that for all their different programs for MATCH. And that also includes the Veterans Services Office, which we have in Merritt Island, Palm Bay, and here at the Government Center. That is not an eligible core service, so we'd have to find different ways to fund that. SO, YOU KNOW, AS YOU LOOK AT THE GREEN, IF THIS HAPPENS, THE VOTERS APPROVE, WHAT DO YOU DO? I'M JUST GOING TO TALK, WE DON'T KNOW THE IMPACTS YET. THIS IS SITTING DOWN WITH YOU ALL WORKING THIS THROUGH. BUT I'M GOING TO USE LIBRARIES BECAUSE IT'S KIND OF A SIMPLER EXPLANATION. LIBRARIES RECEIVES THEIR TAX AND YOU GO ON YOUR TAX BILL, YOU SEE THE LIBRARY TAX RIGHT THERE. So they're going to have an impact of somewhere in the $6 million range. So as board will be coming to you, if they lose $6 million, what do we need to do? Do we start looking at closing branches? Do we look at reducing service hours? Is there a combination thereof? And then when you look at it, you reduce service hours, you got to make sure you have the minimum staffing in a library. You know, you just can't have one employee working in the library. You've got to make sure he's got a cover. You've got to make sure you cover your shifts. So it's not just a simple answer of, oh, you've lost 20%. You just closed down 20% of the hours or you closed down 20% of the branches. We're going to have to look through and talk to the citizens. Parks and recreation, that's a much bigger picture. We have over 100 parks throughout the county. And the definition of parks and recreation is right there. We provide parks and we provide recreations. So do you look at cutting back on parks? Do you look at cutting back on recreation? I know the department's already taken a look. Do you raise the fees on the recreation? But can you raise the fees high enough to keep the programs going? You look at some of the youth leagues and similar things. Could that be a large number, $200, $400? We don't know that yet, but that could be a big number. You look at, I just saw them today, you look at the summer camps, or last week I just saw them out here at Vieira. You know, that's very important to a lot of working families. I forget the number, 175 a week, something like that. Do we raise the fees so high to keep the summer camps going that people can't afford to go to summer camps? How do we find some money to help fund those? And the last one, at least in Parks and Rec, is also the boat ramps. We have a very active boat ramp program. Better way to call it, we provide it up and down the county. Most of the public boat ramps you see are county operated. So at what point, what do we do for the boat ramps? So, I mean, there's some very important things to look at. I won't even get, we don't even know the details to talk about law enforcement, fire rescue, mosquito control. I just want to point those two out because they're kind of, libraries is kind of a simpler budget to work with because they're self-contained. But then seeing the impacts on parks and recreation, it's pretty obvious what you're going to see, some of the impacts of parks and rec. SO NEXT SLIDE, LOGAN. SO THIS IS IN THE REPORT. THIS SHOWS THE GAP BETWEEN CORE SERVICE EXPENSES AND THE GENERAL ADVALORUM. SO WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE BLUE LINE, THAT IS THE CORE SERVICES, INCLUDES PUBLIC SAFETY, SHERIFF'S OFFICE, ROAD AND BRIDGE FACILITIES, CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICES. THERE'S ACTUALLY SOME GENERAL FUND THAT GOES TO NATURAL RESOURCES ON THEIR CODE ENFORCEMENT SIDE. Then when you look at, and I'm never good with the colors, let's call it burnt orange. The burnt orange color, that is your general ad valorem tax revenue. So you see based on, you know, trends, we expect the trends to go up on the blue line and then that burnt orange color, that is actually data coming back. We work with property appraisers. They've been good at giving us some data. So that's following the next two years and then assuming there'll be a little bit of an increase. But I'm going to read this straight from the report because I want to point out this gap. We already have the existing gap. you know, whether this passes or not. So currently in this fiscal year, the gap between general fund revenues available for core government services and the cost of providing these services is covered by a substantial portion of other major general fund revenues, which includes the half-cent sales tax, state shared revenue, FPL franchise fees, communication service tax, and other miscellaneous revenue. the gap between property tax revenues and core services expenditures continue to widen an increasing share of these other major general fund revenues must be rejected redirected to support core core government functions leaving fewer resources available to fund county programs and services that would not be eligible for the property tax funding on the proposed amendment so are OUR ISSUE HERE IS WE'RE ALREADY HAVING A GAP, SO IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR THE BOARD TO SAY, WELL, WE'LL JUST TAKE ALL THE STATE, THE HALF-CENT SALES TAX AND DIRECT IT TO PARKS AND RECREATION. IT'S BASICALLY NOT AVAILABLE BECAUSE WE'RE USING THOSE FUNDS TO FILL IN THAT GAP, WHICH WE HAVE NOW. AND AS YOU SEE, THE GAP IS GETTING WIDER. SO YOU MAY HAVE TO LOOK AT CORE SERVICES. WE'LL HAVE TO FACE SOME SORT OF REDUCTION. AND THEN IF WE LOOK AT WE WANT TO TRY TO KEEP PARKS AND REC WHOLE OR TRANSIT, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO LOOK AT DIFFERENT FUNDING SOURCES BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO USE THE ALTERNATIVE FUNDING SOURCES TO FIX THAT GAP. I JUST WANT TO POINT THAT OUT. YOU HAVE CORE SERVICES, SO YOU CAN ONLY SPEND YOUR ADVALORUM IN THE CORE SERVICES. THEN YOU'RE USING OTHER REVENUES TO MAKE SURE YOU BALANCE THAT BUDGET, WHICH LIMITS YOUR ABILITY TO FUND THE OTHER DEPARTMENTS THAT ARE NOT CORE SERVICE DEPARTMENTS.

SO THE ACTUAL EFFECT OF THE BASICALLY SAYS IF YOU'RE NOT A PART OF THESE CORE SERVICES, YOU CANNOT SPEND ANY AVALORUM ON IT OR IS IT LIMITED? WHAT IS THE ACTUAL IMPACT OF THAT?

YOU CANNOT SPEND THE AVALORUM FUNDS IF IT'S NOT A CORE SERVICE.

SO YOU HAVE TO FIND SOME OTHER USER. 93% OF OUR PARKS ARE FOR PLAYGROUNDS, CHILDREN. 76 RUN SUMMER YOUTH PROGRAMS. 86 FOR TEAM SPORTS. THIS IS AN ANTI-CHILDREN PROPOSAL. Or you just charge user fees.

Or you charge, and, you know, and as you do the user fee. Or you do away with these children programs. I mean, you know, we're not to the point yet, but I mean, I could see us having the discussion is, do you want parks that have playgrounds and swing sets and nothing else? Or do you want recreation programs and you don't have standalone parks that don't offer anything besides recreation programs? Right. I SHOULD ADD, ALSO IN THE PARKS, WE HAVE RUN A NUMBER OF COMMUNITY CENTERS. AND I ACTUALLY HAD A CONVERSATION WITH THE SUPERVISOR. OUR COMMUNITY CENTERS, THEY'RE WONDERFUL EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS. THEY'RE PERFECT FOR THEM. AND THE OTHER INTERESTING THING IS THAT COMMUNITY CENTERS, THE WAY WE DO EVACUATIONS FOR HURRICANE, THEY'RE OUR NUMBER ONE EVACUATION CENTERS RIGHT NOW. uh... they're designed to be that they're designed to help and we work so i mean so there's some impacts beyond just parks in those situations that affect how we provide service and i know how to fix the people services uh... it just it commission it just couple things on this was the apple of the clarify yet we're not allowed to use of warm home decor services OUTSIDE THE CORE SERVICES.

THE OTHER QUESTION I HAVE, HAVING SOME BASIC UNDERSTANDING AS YOU PRESENT, HOW DO YOU DEFINE PUBLIC SAFETY? I mean, mosquitoes and mosquito outbreaks, you know, infectious diseases. I would think core of what we do for protecting public safety in Florida is mosquito control. But as I understand, mosquito control is not included. Yeah. Has that been, did the legislature fix that problem? No.

I'll be straight on honest. We had a meeting with all the counties, county administrators, Florida Association of County Online, And our folks ask that question about mosquito control and MSTU. And I forget the exact chart of accounts. The Florida chart of accounts does not include mosquito control under public safety. So at that moment, the definition is mosquito control is not a core service. Now, maybe if this passes and the implementation, they might add it in. I don't know. But based on the chart of accounts and how the state budgets basically allocate the revenue, it's not a public safety function. Sure, absolutely.

I have two questions. The first question is when you're talking about core services being law enforcement and fire, one hand we're saying that we're going to make sure that we fund them, and on the other hand we're saying we're not holding them harmless. What does that actually look like when we're talking about reducing law enforcement and just say fire at the moment, those two things?

I don't have the budgets in front of me, but it's the Sheriff's Department. If we can't fund in a different way, let me back up. The Sheriff's Department may be facing a $7 million cut just based on the MSTU. At our Fire Rescue Department, we talk red and blue. It's on the fire operations side. It would face a $6 million cut. There is a way you could raise the millages on the non-homesteaded properties to bring back that revenue up to that point, but 35, 40, it would be like a 35, 40% increase to the millage rates.

When you say for fire, the operations side, what are you talking about? Equipment?

The big red trucks. I use technical terms, not the ambulances, yes.

So is that maintenance? Is that getting new things? Is it replacing old?

It's everything.

It's everything.

Can I ask a question? Sure, absolutely.

Does that mean that we would have to impose assessments to cover those services?

uh... yeah i guess that it could raise the effect well you have to do is for the assessment you have to do a study and you have to show the assessments are based on how it benefits the property slash household i'm not gonna get the term exactly right but yeah it's did you just If this passes November 3rd, you can't come in November 4th and say, I'm going to raise the assessment by the equivalent of that $7 million. You've got to do a study. You've got to go through the process. It's not a short, simple process.

Some things like EMS and general law enforcement services, we can't fund by assessment.

One other question, if I may. At the tail end of what you said, Jim, you said that we can't fund... some things are defined as core services. And then if I heard you, you said, but once this is voted on, then they might stick it back in. So are we voting for something we don't actually understand?

It is not. The amendment is not comprehensive in the bill that they passed. And so if it passes, they're going to have to have an implementation session on how to implement it. So, I mean, this is just Jimmy talking here or Jim talking. That's where you see the sausage being made.

Okay. Thank you.

When we cut parks, we'll definitely, and recreation programs, youth programs, we'll definitely have to spend more money on law enforcement. It could be.

Mr. Chair, would the board like to receive a brief update on the ruling and the case on the ballot language from today? Absolutely.

Thank you. And then we'll have Jim finish. Any other questions? Yeah, that's okay. Sorry, but it just... I'm sorry, were you finished, Jim? I can wait until... I'll finish up after you. Okay. Terrific.

All right, so as you know, as Jim sent out the notice earlier, Leon County Circuit Court Judge today declared the ballot title and summary for Amendment 3 to be clearly and conclusively defective. Among the issues with the ballot title in summary was that the ballot title, the court found that it was more akin to a political slogan and that the title Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes was not fair and neutral. That invoking Save Our Homes borrowed the brand of the assessment cap that we're all familiar with. and for other reasons that it was more political rhetoric and not neutral or not an explanation. Also found the summary to be defective in its structure and language. The summary states that the amendment benefits Florida taxpayers by and then lists a number of things. First and foremost was ensuring funding for core services. What the court found was that the amendment does not ensure funding for anything, including those core services we've discussed. Because by shrinking the local tax base, it's likely to decrease the revenues available to local governments, even to fund those core services. So that's the court's analysis of the title. In summary, it's been sent back to the Attorney General who has 10 days to rewrite the ballot title, and then there will be 10 days from that for anyone else to mount a challenge. The state could also appeal from this ruling. So that's the current status. All that said, Amendment 3... will be on the ballot, it's just this particular title and summary that we're issuing the case.

I have a question. So, gosh, just got my sample ballot. How will that work with ballots about to be printed? I know Commissioner Feltner, who's in the middle of all this, you probably know when the ballots are being printed.

Well, the ballot, Mr. Chair, the ballots for the general is what we're talking about. And so those won't be printed until after the primary. And I think there's some period in time, maybe it's 10 days or something like that, to certify the election and all those things. So I don't think the design for the ballot even happens until the very beginning of September. So the early September? BECAUSE OF UOCAVA, SO THAT'S 45 DAYS AHEAD OF AN ELECTION IS WHEN MILITARY BALLOTS AND OVERSEAS HAVE TO GO. SO THEY'VE GOT A SMALL WINDOW THERE TO CERTIFY THE ELECTION RESULTS FROM THE PRIMARY BEFORE THEY START PRINTING BALLOTS AGAIN. SO DEFINITELY THE EARLY PART OF SEPTEMBER. OBVIOUSLY TIM'S NOT HERE AND I DON'T WANT TO ANSWER ON HIS BEHALF, BUT I THINK I HAVE A GOOD UNDERSTANDING ON THAT. OKAY.

And I just want, it's not on a slide, I just want to conclude with a couple points. I mean, if the voters approve this, we as staff, and I would tell you, we have not sat down with the directors, but I could see on November 3rd, if the voters approve it, after November 3rd, we'd be looking at some kind of targeted hiring freeze. You still hire bus drivers and your road and bridge operators because you need those to keep operating. But we look at what we need to do. Possibly place a hold on capital projects that have not started yet to see what the impact is and make sure we can continue to fund them. And then we'd be sitting down pretty quickly to have a consultation with the board on what to do. The interesting thing is we'll have a new board. Your last meeting, I believe, is this board's constituted as November 10th. The next board gets forward in November 17th. So it'll probably be after Thanksgiving, but we'd be asking you to sit down. I even wrote it this way. Final note, if Amendment 3 is passed, the impacts and reduction of services that the citizens will feel will happen before October 1st. Because, you know, good staff members, if they're going to get laid off, they'll leave before October. You know, what are we going to do? So it's not a 12-month or 11-month wait at that point. You'll see the effects throughout 2027. And just repeat, we did write like a six-page, seven-page report. It's attached in the agenda items for anyone to take a look at. And that's it.

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS I HAD, AND I DON'T KNOW IF WE GOT A CLEAR ANSWER ON IT OR NOT. WE TALKED ABOUT THIS. SO OUR AVAILABLE BOND ISSUES, AND I'M SURE THROUGHOUT THE STATE THERE'S QUITE A FEW BONDS THAT HAVE BEEN ISSUED. THOSE BONDS HAVE BEEN ISSUED BASED ON A HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION AT A CERTAIN AMOUNT. YOU GO TO 250, WHAT HAPPENS IF THE ABILITY TO PAY THOSE BONDS IS COMPROMISED? because of a lower assessment.

Does anybody know? I am not the expert on that one. I would say bond obligations are a core service, but you're right, the revenue could still be going down. So at some point you would have an effect on your ability to bond. Your rates would go up. The obvious thing, your rates would go up because you have less guarantee to the bonds.

SO THE LEGISLATURE HAS AN IMPLEMENTATION SESSION SO I GUESS THE ANSWER THEY MAY GIVE IS THE PROBLEMS THAT ARE CREATED WILL GO BEFORE THE LEGISLATURE AND THEY WILL HOPEFULLY BE ABLE TO FIX SOME OF THOSE. OKAY. GO AHEAD.

I THINK ALWAYS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT DEBT, THE DEBT MUST BE SERVICED. SHALL BE SERVICED. SO EXISTING BONDS HAVE TO BE REPAID. AM I RIGHT? OKAY. SO I THINK THE QUESTION OF RATES AND THOSE SORTS OF THINGS WOULD BE ON ANY KIND OF FUTURE ABILITY. BECAUSE THAT CERTAINLY COULD BE INFLUENCED BY YOUR ABILITY TO SERVICE DEBT IN THE FUTURE. BUT WHATEVER EXISTS TODAY THAT WE SERVICE WILL CONTINUE TO BE. I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANYTHING IN THERE THAT SAYS WE DON'T HAVE DEBT OBLIGATION BECAUSE OF THIS REFERENDUM.

And it's a core service, and at least paying off with ad valorem, general fund ad valorem, our debt service is $2.8 million a year, so it's not, for us, we're in decent shape. I mean, there's utilities, solid waste have some debt out there, but they're not the general ad valorem funding.

Mr. Chair? That's a good answer. Yes.

I just have a comment. It's not a question. So this original homestead thing was designed to keep people in their houses, right? It was designed. That sounded like a question. It's not. But you look at it, and if we have to bring money in other ways, then it's still going to come out of the pockets of the people who suddenly don't have this anymore. I don't know. I'm just concerned that it's not doing what they wanted it to do. That's all.

Okay. Well, thank you for that update. And we'll just follow this as it moves on. I certainly agree with the general intent. We need to fix some problems with our property tax issues. Is this the solution? It could be problematic. Okay, I'd like to move on to the consent agenda. Do we have any cards on the consent?

Yes, we do, sir.

We have a bunch. Okay, any consent items that the board would like to pull? Don't have any, so we do have cards. First card, Rick Heffelfinger, F5.

No projector today, huh? Rick Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. My concern with this one is that in the recent past, there was a water main break, I think, or some service that needed to be done, and there was a boil water notice that went up north, and this project is up north, and I understand you're going to be shutting down a pretty major line to divert into the new line and isolate the old line. If I have that right, I think I do. My concern is that there was a disconnect in communication with up north from what I heard that they were not notified. The water just went out. They didn't know if they were going to have to boil water. People are at work. The water's out. They don't know if when the water goes out, you don't have fire protection as far as I know. So I would hope that some lessons were learned from that because I think there were some people that squawked pretty loudly about not being notified of that and that that would happen here. And that is my only comment that It's great that you're replacing water mains, and that's super-duper. There might have been some concern about a water pressure drop, so if that's going to happen up there, I think people ought to be informed. So it was just my concern for recent history, because this does seem to be a pretty major line that's going to affect a lot of people. And that was all I had. Thanks.

Okay, thank you. Rick, you might as well stay. Okay. F6.

Ookie-doo.

F6. So this is the FDEP grant applications. Now, this doesn't kick in until next year. But again, I always like to praise you guys. Go for every one of those grants and get every piece of money that you don't have to pay anything for. My question with this one is, it's been identified that two of these grants applications have matching funds. And the first one is inflow and infiltration prevention countywide. There's a utility service match of $3 million. I assume they have that money. There's a utility service match of 1.1 million. But there are some biggies in here that say zero match. I don't know if they truly are zero match. There is no requirement to match them. Or we just haven't decided how much that is and where it comes from. Because again, I told you, I always look for the big numbers on these things, right? The financial impacts. And so it's only saying that there's 1.1 and a 3 million coming from, but it is identified utility service, and that's an enterprise fund, so everything's cool there, right? I just don't know if there's any more match. I just had a question.

I think no match means no match, doesn't it? That means no match. No match. Oh, I like that answer. All right, I'm done with that one. Okay.

Rick, you're still on. F7. Let's see what we got here. F7. This sounds like... Public hearing to amend the Barefoot Bay utility service rates. There were some people here last month that I think were quite adamant that you guys need to give them some relief. I don't know if this gives them 100% relief, but it's good news, right? It's going to reduce, roll their rate back at least to last year. So I think that's good. There is a fiscal impact. It doesn't say there is one. It rolls back to 2025. I guess there was a study that was done that identified that phasing out the Barefoot Bay was not going to cost that high of a rate because all those monies that were being collected partially because of that rate, I think, was to maintain that plant. And you're going to, I hope, you just keep it on its last legs until it phases out. But it doesn't say how much revenue is being lost due to that rollback. Again, that's probably an enterprise fund thing, and do I care? I don't know. It just seemed like reducing rates and not showing how much rate loss there was. I was just a little concerned about that.

Why don't we do this? If you're finished, we have 11 cards on this item. Maybe have staff give a quick summary of it, and maybe some of the questions could be answered. A lot of people came up from Everett Bay, I guess, to be heard.

I think there was a multi-year rate increase that everybody was squawking. I don't know what it rolled all that back. I think that was almost complete or did complete last year.

Let's get a presentation. Thank you.

Good evening. Just to give you a brief overview on this agenda item. So at the last board meeting, the board approved for the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District to be sunset effective in January of 2030. That's based on the last bond payment associated with the barefoot Baywater sewer district being made on December of 2029 So, you know when we do rate calculations We're always looking at red calculations for the entity to be around for perpetuity.

Everybody here.

Okay. I'm sorry Is that better want to speak up? Okay. Yes. You want me to start over? Yes, okay so Just to repeat, so last board meeting, the board approved for the Barefoot Baywater Sewer District to be sunset in January of 2030. The rationale of that is that the last bond payment associated with the Barefoot Baywater Sewer District OCCURS IN DECEMBER OF 2029. BASED ON THAT BOARD ACTION, WE LOOKED AT, ALONG WITH THE RAY CONSULTANT, AN ANALYSIS OF LOOKING AT WHAT THE NEEDED REVENUE WOULD BE IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN ITSELF UNTIL THE 2030 SUNSET PERIOD. Based on that, we did an analysis. We reviewed that the user rates could be rolled back to the 2025. I believe that's a reduction of 4.8%, and that we would flatline them from there out. I will say... and the agenda report and there's further red lines associated with it. So anytime you make a revision to a resolution, you have to show it through a red line process. When the rates were approved in 2022, the rates that are shown in red line not only are they adjusted but um they were basically shown to the 2025 rate and we just made them and the remaining rates we just made current from the 2022 to the 2026. so in a nutshell um WATER AND SEWER USER RATES ROLLED BACK TO 2025, A 4.8% REDUCTION. THEY'LL BE FLATLINED THROUGH 2030. COME 2030, THE WATER AND SEWER ACCOUNTS IN THE BEARFOOT BAY WATER SEWER DISTRICT WILL GET TURNED OVER TO ADOPTED TO WHATEVER THE COUNTY-WIDE SYSTEM IS AT THAT TIME.

Okay, and this is not passing the rate. This is simply permission to advertise. That's correct. This is step one. Yes, absolutely.

So Eddie, I just want to clarify. So when we had people coming into my office saying the rates down in Barefoot Bay are difficult, and when we ask you to re-look at this, what did you anticipate the percentage rate increase being over the next three years prior to you re-looking at it?

We were, so by board direction, we use the CPI water and sewer maintenance index. So the last adjustment was 4.8% and we look at it every November.

And what did we anticipate those increases to be? Any idea?

I would have to look at the number, but the way everything's going, I would anticipate another 4 or 5% increase.

So by doing what we're doing, we're not only rolling it back, we're also stopping those increases for the next three years.

Yeah. So if you look at, you know, if you ask me the way how everything is going in the industry, the CPI is absolutely in a trajectory to keep going up and up. So you're correct. Thank you. We're kind of like flatlining it.

Okay, great. Thanks. Any other questions? We'll open up. We have about 11 cards. Dennis Emanuel. Emanuel.

My name is Dennis LaBelle.

E-M-M-E-L. Oh, that's me.

Denise. Denise, I'm sorry. Denise.

Can Dennis go first? We have a order that we wanted to speak to.

Absolutely. Okay. Actually, he's next, so.

Well, my name is Dennis LaBelle, and I live in Barefoot Bay. And it's basically good evening. This is awkward for me to come up to you, as I'm sure you've seen many people like that before. But I'm here representing the Unified Group of Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer Customers. We are here to address a clear legal contradiction in how Bevard County structures its water billing. specifically this agenda item today you are voting on a proposal to decrease our water and sewer rates back to the twenty twenty five left a five point one five percent decrease while in any rate reduction is a step in the right direction let us be clear this tiny rollback is an inadequate band aid that does nothing to alleviate the crushing weight of our bills it will not placate us For anybody who's watching, my bill's $110 for two people. So you would compare that to your bill. Between 2022 and 2026, Barefoot Bay utility rates skyrocketed by a staggering 54%. Argue that if you like. Rolling rates back by just one year leaves us trapped under a compounding massive financial penalty compared to the rest of our county customers you manage. A single family residential home in Barefoot Bay is in an exact same consumer class as residential homes in Port St. John, Merritt Island, and Mims. We flush the same water, require the same statutory environmental processing, and answer to the same Board of County Commissioners. So basically a 54% increase rollback of 5.5, 1.5% is not adequate. And I've got another 40 seconds or so. So when they turned over the system, Barefoot Bay system to the county, they were required to pay a fee. So when new builders build these massive buildings, are they required to pay a fee to hook up? And just for my information, do they have to pay like $5 million to hook up to the system?

Yes, there is an impact fee that new construction has to pay. You want to just give us a general idea of maybe where that is? I'm sorry?

5 million or 10 million for $10,000 units?

It's under $1,000 for water and sewer. The exact amount, I believe it's like $700,000, $800,000. Per toilet? Excuse me, per ERC. For what? ERC. A single family home equivalent. Okay.

So for Barefoot Bay it'd be $5,000?

So it's a calculation. So as you'll see, we do the same calculation. So the agenda item we have later about the connection fees for countywide, it started off with a two bedroom equivalent. And then we use the Florida administrative code to do the calculation on anything that alters from that, whether it's high or low.

Thank you.

One thing I want to point out, I appreciate your input. So we're not voting on anything today other than advertising the ordinance. So we're not going to do any fees or increases. This is only to have permission to advertise.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks. Thank you. Denise Emel? I messed it up. I'm sorry, Denise.

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. I, too, am a single family home in Barefoot Bay, and my water bill is $94. I am the only one who lives there. I won't even power wash my house because of the water bill. Despite the facts of our sameness, the county continues to carve barefoot bay utility customers out into an isolated billing island even with this five point one five percent decrease our neighbors across the county will still pay a base excuse me sewer fee of thirty two seventy nine while we are charged a premium fifty four dollars our consumption rate will remain highly inflated this is not a difference in usage it is a geographical Penalty freezing or slightly rolling back these rates until 2029 does not solve the underlying injustice. Only integrating us into the countywide system sooner will truly help with our bills. All five of you are equal in representing us. and in being responsible for our water and wastewater. Since buying our utility system 26 years ago, we customers have paid inflated rates. Isn't 26 years long enough? Must we really wait another three and a half years to see real relief? We ask this commission to stop delaying and integrate us into a single equal county utility class immediately. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Chuck Barrett, our next speaker. And then after that, Bonnie Carpenter. You're on deck. She's on deck.

Karen Conrad.

Chuck Barrett.

My name is Karen Conrad, and I live in Barefoot Bay.

Yeah, I called Chuck Barrett. Well, we switched. Barnett. Barnett. We have all the cards in order. Yeah, they're out of order, actually. This is the order they were turned in. This is number five and number six.

Yeah, I was supposed to be number three.

Just following the number by which was given to me.

Does it matter if I speak before?

What's your name again?

Karen. Karen Conrad.

Oh. I don't even have a card for Karen Connery. Let me see. Oh, you were number four. I may have messed up. All right. But you're number four. You're right. I was wrong.

I'm number three, I think. Good evening.

Just give me your name. You all go in the order you like. I don't care.

Okay. My name is Karen Conrad from Barefoot Bay. And I would like to closely look at the administrative logic the county uses to justify our utility bills. Brevard County Utility Services currently operates six wastewater treatment plants. For five of those plants, the county operates a unified regional pricing structure. This means if a plant in Northern Brevard needs a multi-million dollar upgrade or a facility in the South Beaches faces high operational costs, These financial burdens are socialized across the entire county footprint. The county does this because it recognizes that a unified utility network benefits the whole region's health, ecology, and economy. But when it comes to the sixth plant, our plant, Barefoot Bay, the logic just flips. Suddenly, regional socialization stops and localized billing begins. Why does this principle of a shared infrastructure apply to only five plants but ends at the borders of Barefoot Bay? It's just different logic.

Thank you. Thank you. Chuck Barnett. Okay. Why don't you just come up and give me your name? Because I think you guys have it all worked out.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Chuck Barnett, and I'm a member of the Barefoot Bay. We have heard the response from the county's hands are tied until existing utility bonds are paid off on December 31st, 2029. Respectfully, commissioners, this is a bureaucratic excuse, not a legal barrier. Bond obligations do not prevent you from giving us operational equity today. You could vote to integrate us into the county-wide system now by keeping the remaining bonds payments as a transparent temporary fixed line item exclusively on barefoot based bills until 2029. Our existing debt will still be paid by the users of the system and not one penny need to be paid by the other customers. If current bond debt obligations doesn't prevent the county from blending rates from the rest of its system, it cannot be used as an excuse to isolate us. The dual standard is administratively inconsistent. If this system is regional for five plants, it must be regional for all six. This is something you yourselves agree to when you voted two weeks ago to integrate Barefoot Bay into the countywide system. You have no legal or logical basis to justify waiting until December 31st, 2029. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Bonnie Carpenter. I lived in the Pines for 23 years. I now live in Barefoot Bay and I am a resident of Barefoot Bay. I'm here to challenge the accounting behind Barefoot Bay's inflated utility rates. When a municipality isolates a single infrastructure asset for localized billing, the math almost always penalizes the captive rate payer through the over-allocation of administrative overhead. We are paying a massive premium on our base facility charges. I pay $110 a month, and I throw my dishwater out on my plants, so I don't get it. We want to know exactly how much central county overhead is being packed into that number. Our billing is processed centrally by Brevard County Utility Services. Our engineering is managed centrally. The executive leadership, legal teams, and administrative staff are all located in Vieira, funded by general utility revenues. If we are paying higher rates to cover localized operational costs, but we are also being charged a percentage to support the county's central administrative apparatus, we are being double-dipped. Thank you.

Thank you. I have Norman Perkins on my list.

Good evening. I'm Norman Perkins. I do live in Barefoot Bay on Papaya Circle. And the reason we are publicly requesting a transparent line item of the most recent cost service study. We want proof that revenues collected by Barefoot Bay are staying entirely within our plant ecosystem and are not actively subsidizing central staff or capital improvements of the other five blended facilities. In addition, we are publicly requesting a transparent line item audit going back to our utility increases from 2013 resolution number 13002 and a transparent line item audit AUDIT OF INCREASES FROM 2022, RESOLUTION NUMBER 2022-01. WE WANT PROOF THAT THE REVENUE COLLECTED FROM BAREFOOT PAY CUSTOMERS HAS BEEN USED FOR AND ACCOUNTED FOR THE ITEMS AND AREAS THAT WERE STATED IN THE RESOLUTIONS THAT THEY WERE USED. IN ADDITION, I'D LIKE TO SAY THAT MY WATER BILL WAS $186 LAST MONTH. And it's unfortunate that I can't even drink the water. I have a whole house filter system, which many, many, many people in Barefoot Bay also can't drink the water there. They either buy the water and use it like that, or they have to have some kind of a filtration system. So it's kind of unfortunate that I pay $186 and I can't even drink the water. But I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Ray Delorme.

Hi, I'm Ray Delorme. I'm from Barefoot Bay. I've been there since 2019. And thank you for the opportunity to at least get a chance to talk to you. I want to bring this back to the human cost of this rate structure. The vast majority of the customers that use Barefoot Bay water and sewer system live in the two manufactured home communities. A majority of these residents are retirees, veterans, individuals living on fixed Social Security incomes. Their public utility designs are supposed to act as a form of social insurance. It is meant to protect vulnerable populations from being financially wiped out by localized geographic or infrastructure challenges. Over the last few years, while general county utility rates increases were managed at single-digit percentages, Barefoot Bay was hit with compounding double-digit annual increases. For someone on fixed income, a $54 base rate just for wastewater is not just a minor inconvenience. It cuts directly into money needed for groceries, healthcare, gas, and insurance. I want to just lift this bill up and show you, but this is a utility bill as an example of the unfairness. In June 10th to July 10th of 2026, The total current charges for 2,800 gallons of usage is $132. With rollback to the 2025 rates, the cost of this bill would be $125. In this home, if this home was on Merritt Island or on another countywide system, the cost would be $77. Big difference. The increase to the other countywide customers, if you integrated us into the countywide system now, would be $2 a month, or even less if the Barefoot Bay customers continue paying off existing bond debt, as we have proposed. Again, I've been there since 2019. When we first moved there, our bill was $46 minimum that we had to pay. My last bill was how much? $143. $143. Where do you go from 46 to 143? Not sure, but maybe you can help us get into that and figure that out and correct it for us. Thank you very much. Time.

Thank you. Sidney James.

Mr. Chairman, fellow commissioners, I've been a Barefoot Bay water sewer customer for over 12 years. We are a captive consumer class. We cannot choose another sewer provider. We cannot dig our own septic tanks. We're entirely at the mercy of this board. Forcing a fixed income retirement community to bear 100% of its localized infrastructure burden for another three and a half years while younger, wealthier, more developing parts of the county enjoy socialized blended rates is funnily unfair. It's just unjust. It is fundamentally unfordable for many of the residents in this system, including mobile home communities of Barefoot Bay and Snug Harbor. We've been paying a lot more than everyone else in the county since the first double digit increases of 2022. We're not asking for a refund. We just want you to stop fleecing us. Thank you.

Terry Brewer. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, he's hard of hearing.

John.

This is Sidney James.

Sidney, we heard from Sidney, yeah. Thank you.

To wrap up our group's presentation today, we want to look forward to the solution. We acknowledge that the County Commission has previously discussed and voted to move forward with sunsetting the independent Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District and by advertising today to roll back rates a tiny bit and promise they will not increase from now until we are integrated into the countywide system. This is not a gift. I read the audit. We were overpaying and the audit said that and so you get to not raise it anymore and roll it back and we're still paying all of everything we owe on. So it's not a gift to not charge us more. In fact, legally you're not supposed to charge more than is required. These are tiny concessions you're offering and they do not solve the problem of the unfair and unaffordable rates for barefoot bay water and sewer customers. Let us address the claim that this transition cannot happen until December 31, 2029 because of outstanding bond debt. This is legally incorrect. Florida law allows this board to dissolve the district immediately. Morris Richardson can tell you as much. The bondholders only care that their debt service is secured by the utility's revenues. You do not need to wait three and a half more years. You can dissolve the district now, absorb Barefoot Bay into the unified county network, and immediately lower our base sewer rate from $54.28 to the countywide standard of $32.79. or less, depending on the tier of customer. To honor the remaining bond obligations, simply place, as previously stated, a transparent temporary debt service surcharge as a separate line item exclusively on the Barefoot Bay customer bills. This allows us to pay off our outstanding bond debt without being forced to suffer under unaffordable fees for the next three and a half years. Don't let this transition drag out through years of artificial bureaucratic delay. We have proven, well, we have stated the legal inconsistency, the mathematical unfairness, and the clear path to an immediate financial compromise. You have the ability to reconsider or repeal your vote from two weeks ago and update the timeline for integration of our utility system. We ask for a concrete timeline and an expedited vote to finally bring regional utility equity to Barefoot Bay by the end of 2026. Thank you. Thank you.

John Requa. I'm trying. Thank you. You're doing very well, sir. Thanks.

Can I pass this out for you? Yes.

Thank you.

So I agree with all my fellow residents. It's so nice to see them here. Barefoot Bay is a wonderful place to live, except for the water. That's why we're fighting so hard, we love it there. So what I have set before you is I looked over, and I have been asking for this by email, and I've come here, I don't know how many times, just right here, that you put out, Ms. Atkinson had this done by the council for going over the prices, the cost, the debt, and everything, the barefoot pay, water and sewer. I read it twice, I understand little. You'll see some questions on your page, and they are for Mr. Edward, Ms. Atkinson, and someone from the council that did this survey, and I requested that you come to Barefoot Bay, send an appointment out with board trustees, come to Barefoot Bay, you've been there before, you've done this before, town hall meeting, and explain the audit. It's difficult to understand. As an example, they will see several questions on there that I have. I have more as I read it. You can't do that in your three minutes of independence. You get three minutes of democracy that you have. So I'm confused about the cost of the bond when it started. I'm confused about how many bonds were involved. I hear there was at least two. I'm confused about how much is collected. The highlighted stuff you see on the page is answers I got from your audit. I put that on there. I see the total taken per year, $7,760,587. It's hard looking at that thing. I want to know where the money goes. And I still would like to know what is the estimated cost for the consumer when we go on the new plant. You have to have an idea of what that's going to be. You have to have a forecast. You can't build something if you don't know what you're going to charge. So I'm real curious about that. And I want to make sure that none of our funds that we're paying now are going towards that new facility right now. since we're going to be liberated and be a part of Brevard County, which we don't feel like we are right now. Separate district is what I keep hearing. So that's my request. I agree with my fellow citizens. This is amazing. I usually come here by myself for a couple of years. This is just heart-lifting. So, you know... I really would like you to get a hold of the trustees and set a meeting up. I'm requesting that you do that very, very strongly. There's nothing wrong with transparency. There's nothing wrong with answering questions. We still disagree with the decision you made, but it doesn't mean you can't answer these questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, that was our last card, I think. Is there anyone else?

I took my time back because you cut me off. You didn't get cut off. I want to play back the tape.

Okay.

Instant playback. Okay.

This is the next one. Okay. All right, so we'll go to F8. Thank you for your input. I know we'll be not making a decision, just simply having permission to advertise and give us an opportunity to answer any additional questions. Commissioner Atkins. Go ahead.

I'll make sure that these get answered. If they haven't gotten answered for you, we'll make sure that they do.

Thank you.

And thank you for your input. Okay. F8. Richard. I wave. You wave. Okay.

All right.

That's it for all the consent agenda. So a motion would be in order for the consent. There's a motion. Is there a second to approve consent? Second. Second. All in favor say yay. Yay. Opposed?

Yeah.

It carries unanimously. Thank you. We will move on here. No chance to. I've taken so many notes from that last item, I have to dig through them and get back on the agenda. Public hearings, amend the utility services rate resolution adjusting connection.

Staff?

We have G public comments. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I skipped over public comments. We have two cards on the public comment part of the agenda. Brian Moladar. Moland.

Moland.

Moland. Sorry, Brian.

Brad.

Brad. All good. I have a rough night tonight.

That's probably my handwriting. Go ahead, Brad. I just want to say good evening, everybody, and thanks for letting me speak tonight. My name is Brad Molander. I live down in Melbourne Beach. I've been here for about 10 years. AI engineer during the day, and I work at, or since I work, I volunteer at Brevard Soccer Academy in the evening. So the reason why I'm here tonight, I don't want to take up too much time, but with the property tax issue, on the agenda for this fall and its potential ramifications to the county. I was curious on what modeling had been done for impacts to Parks and Rec. You know, I noticed that you had some numbers created and I was wondering if you guys had a plan on the Parks and Rec side on how that might impact our youth programs. And as a reminder, I got into this, you know, one day you show up to your daughter's soccer practice and they say, hey, we need a coach and I'll do it. So you volunteer and do it. And then kind of got sucked in the whole thing because when I was little, I was... and used soccer and it kind of gave me the opportunities that I have in my life. And one of the great things about BSA, specifically in other area clubs, is that we are a non-profit organization. So we are here exclusively for the community. And to get kids off iPads, get them outside, and as of last spring we have 1,600 kids in our program. And so one of the things that we're looking at is how those services potentially could impact the club, the parks, but also the families. So we have a lot of kids that we subsidize that cannot afford to play soccer. And we get them in the club, put them on the field, get them shoes, and get them out there. It's a sight to see. If any of you are ever near Max Roads in the evenings in the fall or spring semester, you're going to see a lot of kids out there having the time of their lives. And that is all due to the volunteers that do it. So I do appreciate everything that Parks and Rec has done for the club up to this point. It's been wonderful. It's a great partnership that we have. And I think that's my root question is what modeling has been done? What impacts are there? And is Parks and Rec open to talking with some of the area clubs so that we can start making provisions and help understand what those impacts could be? Because our season runs starting right now and goes through right at the end of November. And then, of course, right in February we fire up again. So I appreciate everything that you guys do day in and day out. And this is my specific question.

Thank you, Brad. Let's maybe, since we did have this at the beginning, we did have questions. Any, I think it's a very good question.

I'm looking at Ian Golden's, the park and recs director. He's sitting right there, so he's going to catch you, Mr. Mullen.

Oh, okay. That'd be great.

And I will just highlight again that $18 million number, that's $11 million of general fund that wouldn't be eligible because it's not a core service. And that $7 million number is the reduction due to less taxable values in the MSTUs. And there is three or four, I forget the exact number of parks MSTUs, so each part of the county is a little bit different.

So the quick answer is if someone requests information, some factual information about what the potential impacts are, we can have a conversation. There is that state law that restricts county employees while they're on the clock from starting conversations. I will not take a position one way or the other, but I'll be happy to have a conversation with you. And I was going to catch you as you walked out and basically tell you the same thing.

No, I understand. No, that's great. And again, it's just... A reminder, I guess, it'll be helpful. There's a lot of area clubs like us. We're not even the largest one, 1,600 kids, a lot of kids. We're not even the largest one. And so I think it'd be helpful just to open those lines of communication so that we can help work with the parents because we're getting questions as well. So appreciate it. Thank you, everybody.

Yes, Commissioner Pitcher.

I am, I get your pain on this and I have a lot of concern too. Quick question. And if you don't know that, just give me the eyeballs and we'll figure it out later. But are we allowed to, if this gets implemented next year to have new voter approved, um, referendums just for parks?

bad question the short answer is on that is any new referendum would have to be at a general election so that would put you at 2028 so it would not be able to help the first year of reduction okay so that makes it tough um commissioner altman i do agree with you on this i i think they're taking this out a lot on the kids and i have great concern for that myself so thank you thank you

Very good questions. And as we go through this, hopefully we'll have more answers. The problem staff has is they're under the gun. If they try to answer a question, then they're going to be accused of advocating for, against the referendum or, you know, so they have to be careful. I really appreciate your question because if the public is asking for a question, we're not preempting you or asking, you know, prior to having a question. We should have the ability to answer objective questions. How much money? How much money is lost? And then how do we replace that? I think those questions are really good, and please keep them coming. Please keep them coming. Appreciate what you do, too. Our soccer leagues are amazing in this county. Sandra Sullivan?

Good evening, Sandra Sullivan. So I run a group called Waves Action, and the focus is on accountability and transparency. And I want to have a couple comments on Amendment 3 on this referendum and just say that coming into this budget time, myself and others ask that you do some cutting costs of wasteful spending and cut costs. And so it's the sentiment that I have seen on Waves Action are people are pissed off That the spending keeps going up, up, up, up, up, and there's without restraint. Our budget, we have the highest assessments. We have the highest growth. We have a lot of growth revenue coming in. The budget went from $1.83 million in 2022 to $2.3 million. $83 million in 2025, pretty substantial increase. I'm going to just say my disappointment in the last meeting with Ms. Pritchett coming on this board. The motion that was taken on the budget to bust the cap with Feltner voting for that, the only no vote was Katie Delaney. to direct staff and Mr. Feltner asked staff to clarify, were they preparing two budgets? One to put up there that wasn't busting the cap and one to bust the cap? No, it was clarified they were only preparing a budget to bust the cap. So in the last meeting, a budget was put up that didn't bust the cap, and then at the last minute, Chair Allman takes a vote, oh, let's take a vote on a different budget with no accountability and transparency, no documents online, and the vote was taken to bust the cap. So not too happy about that. I also want to point out that in coming here for many years, there's been the request to cut the CRAs that had no debt. Note, we gave $12.1 million to your friend who wants to build, through the CRA, to build a hotel parking lot, parking building. Impact fees, we didn't take action on that. We kicked the can down the road on that. We didn't cut waste. I advise you, don't vote to put Sorrel, because you may need this if this Amendment 3 passes, for infrastructure needs. No, we went ahead, we're going to put that on there. I hope people vote no. And I'll just say that I would ask you at this time, To go and look at that budget and go cut waste and go cut costs and cut where you need to do. Ms. Atkinson did a very good list of things that you could cut. There's a lot of wasteful spending. And it's time to take action on that now before this budget goes through or you're just digging yourself deeper.

Right on, Sandra. Okay, that's our public hearings. I don't think we have another public hearing card, do we? No. No. Okay. We'll go to H1.

Good evening, Commissioner. So item H1 is to amend the utility services rate resolution adjusting essentially the connection fees for South Beaches, Merritt Island, North Brevard, Port St. John and South Central mainland service area. As you'll see in the agenda item, you'll see a clean version and a red line version. To just go over the red line version, the core of it is that we made the adjustments to the connection fee to get current from the 1993 to current. In addition, we also took the liberty of doing some definition revisions. Some of the small service fees like towing service, we made some minor adjustments from like $50 to 75 and of that magnitude. But the big component with regard to this is the water sewer connection fee and seeking approval.

Okay, we have any questions from the Commission? We have one card from Richard Halfelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. Again, we did a big blow-up on 7726. I was really pissed off on 7726 because this was extremely confusing. I will give Eddie and his gang credit. We cleaned up the attachments here quite nicely. There's no more doc files. There's no more confusion that this was only connection fees, right? And I'll tell you what I would have loved to have had attached that first time was this. This study right here would have caused that confusion to go away. Why is it left only at the public hearing? Because we can't study it? I don't know. You know, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say you held out until the end, but you have a connection. This study was done in October 22, 2025, and it should have been attached the time we had that conversation. You wasted a lot of my time and your own, I think. It was not a clean conversation. And I'm glad to see it cleaned up, and I'll give Eddie credit for that. I would hope my complaining had something to do with that. Maybe, maybe not. But I'll take that. And this is connection fees, and jam it to them. I'm 100% in favor. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Any questions, comments, motions? A question? Okay.

Yeah, I didn't get the privilege of working through you guys with this, so I am not going to vote to support this. I would have supported spreading it out over a five-year period of time to just check and see how much it might have maybe knocked us out of the market of new housing. So I'm just letting you guys know that's going to be my vote. Okay. Great. All right.

Any other comments or questions? All right, we'll bring it to the board. Is there a motion? Do you have a motion?

I'm waiting to see what it is that we want to do here. Maybe there's more discussion needed.

OK, let's have more discussion.

As Mr. Heffelfinger said, we cleaned it up. We did a lot of work on it. Staff took a lot of time. I'm ready to support this thing because of the work that they've done. And I support connection fees on new builds.

Okay. All right. I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second.

So the motion is second. Any discussion? All those in favor say yay. Yay. Opposed? Passes four to one with Commissioner Pritchett. Tom, I think you voted for it, didn't you?

Against it.

You voted against it.

I voted against it.

OK. I'M SORRY. I MISUNDERSTAND. SO IT PASSES 3-2. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

OK.

ITEM H-2. Mr. Chair, item H2 is an ordinance that would amend Chapter 102 of the Brevard County Code to make data centers ineligible for economic development ad valorem tax exemptions. At your April 7, 2026 regular meeting, the Board approved legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance to make data centers ineligible for those tax exemptions. That was approved at the time. It took a while because there was a previous amendment to the code that had not been incorporated by Muni code into our codified ordinances. So had to take some measures to make sure that this is codified correctly if the board enacts it. But it's before you tonight. The proposed ordinance provides a definition for the term data center, which is drawn from federal and state law. Further provides the data centers are ineligible for the economic development ad valorem tax exemption program.

Okay, first speaker, Richard Heffelfinger.

Richard Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. Yeah, this has been hanging out since April, so I'm glad to see it finally show up. And the fiscal impact is an interesting statement because it says the correlation is that the lack of incentive may cause a developer to locate to another Florida county or state. The Brevard County will receive no new ad valorem and tangible personal property tax revenues from the project. That was exactly the objective of doing this, was to give them no reason to want to come here. We've heard all the news. It's a hot topic. It's a hot thing for everybody. Yeah, you might get a big boom at the construction phase. but then you're going to eat it on the water, the electricity usage, and the public's going to bear a large part of that. I don't think that's disputed. I think that's fact now. So I don't, I mean, geez, the Chinese are going to beat us at AI? I doubt it, right? But, hey, that's just not something that I think as a taxpayer and as a resident here, I want to bear that cost, and I don't think anybody does. You can stick them out in the middle of nowhere where there's plenty of water. We don't have plenty of water. We know that. We've been telling that for years, and yet we're still building like crazy. That's a different topic. Electricity costs, I think we've got one nuclear power plant here, don't we? We should get some more if you want to play with data centers. So I think the intent here was good. But the intent, it's not complete. you're going to hear some requests for a motion to ask for a moratorium. So we have more time to look at it because I don't want to, you know, we say that these things are fact. Are they truly fact? What is the water you should? You'll hear some people say, no, man, they fill up the chillers and they reuse the water. So they're not really a big water drain. Well, that's not, I've heard that one place. I don't know if it's true or not, but time to think about it would be good time to spend. Since we're not going to give them incentives, they're probably not going to want to come here And to say that we're going to write them off completely, that's not fair either. But I don't want to incentivize them. So I think a moratorium would allow this issue to be settled and studied better to decide exactly what the impacts are. So I think that's a good way to put that on hold and have more data come together because a lot of people are digging it. And there's going to be technology changes. Maybe some of this heat factor, electronics, incredible jumps and bounds, right? We're doing now what we couldn't. unthinkable 10 years ago. So maybe that data center problem goes away and maybe we could have data centers. But until that happens, we need to spend some time and think about it. So I'd like to see a move for a motion to have a moratorium. Bring back an ordinance language for that so we can spend more time about this before somebody drops a big problem in our lap. Thank you very much.

Rick, before you leave, under Senate Bill 180, are we allowed to pass a moratorium? Morris, I was under the impression that

IT COULD BE PROBLEMATIC WITH REGARD TO 180.

WE'LL GET AN OPINION FOR THAT LATER.

A MOTION TO LOOK AT IT WOULD BE A GOOD START.

OKAY. ALL RIGHT.

THANK YOU.

OKAY. SANDRA SULLIVAN.

GOOD EVENING. SANDRA SULLIVAN OF WAVES ACTION. So thank you for putting this on the agenda to remove the data center tax exemption for the EDC tax abatement. We also are asking for a two-year moratorium on hyperscale data centers. Yesterday, Flagler County and Lakeland passed moratoriums on data centers while Edgewater passed a permanent ban Ormond Beach votes tonight with Palm Beach and Dixie County meeting on the August 6th. There are about 20 counties and cities Florida-wide in advance of that. I spoke at the last meeting that have And as you know, the governor race is really heated up over this race. So over this issue, I want to just go over a little bit about the past performance on this particular issue. So Brevard County voted to approve the legislative intent on April 7th. Brevard did not go to legislative intent before the vote on December 17th, which gave the data center's 20-year tax exemption. Under Florida Statute 196.1995, Brevard County voters passed the referendum on November 5th, 2024. They voted for a specific, strictly bound constitutional authority. The statute dictates any ad valorem tax exemption granted by the county board under this program cannot exceed 10 years and so it should not have been approved in the first place. On November 5th, 2024, when voters approved the tax exemption abatement, voters would probably not have voted for it if you had put in a 20-year tax exemption for data centers. Right after, on December 17th, 2024, right before Christmas when everybody's busy, when Feltner was on the EDC board and chair of this commission, the ordinance was changed for a 20-year tax exemption. As established by Florida Statute 125.66, you cannot change the ordinance without going out to legislative intent, as you did for this item, for voter referendum. Now, I came here, I spoke about this, and I am grateful that you have taken action on this Data centers concern the public very much, the hyperscale. Again, I hope that you will consider also doing a moratorium, two years, not a long time, but enough time to evaluate this. My understanding is the EDC has some proposals in front of them. As you know, the EDC gets a 12-month exemption on public records by the law. that the state has done. So we don't even get to find out what's really going on, but we know what's going on because I've done enough records requests to see that the EDC is already working on this issue. So I hope that you'll approve this item today and correct that record. Thank you.

Next speaker, Steve Burnett.

Thank you, Commissioners. Steve Burdette, Rockledge, Florida. In my retirement, I've kind of had a lot of time to see what's going on with these data centers throughout our country. And I know that a lot of people have had concerns over basically what happens to the water availability, what happens to their water bills. Same with electricity. I'm especially concerned about the noise, especially those that have to live by these things. And I know from my experience, I believe the county has a noise ordinance, but I'm not sure how it would apply to a business of this nature. The other concern I expressed, and this was even before a lot of these data centers were built, And this is more at the national level, not necessarily you guys. But what happens to these data centers? We have these redevelopment areas that were supposed to be used for blight, to take care of blight. Well, if these data centers end up becoming outdated, who's going to take them down? Who's going to get rid of them? Are they going to be an eyesore? Is that part of the cost that these people have to do when they decide to build these data centers? I just wanted to express my concerns. I know a lot of people throughout the country have had concerns about it, and I just assume they don't start here. Or if they do, that we make sure that they're governed properly. Thank you.

Okay, those are all our cards. We will go back to the board for the code adjustment.

Motion to approve, sir.

I'll second. Motion and second to approve.

May I ask, the ordinance, are the agendas phrased as consider adopting? So would you mind phrasing that just in a adopt the proposed ordinance? Is that the motion? Yes, sir. Thank you very much.

SO THE MOTION IS TO ADOPT THE PROPOSED ORDINANCE AMENDING CHAPTER 102, ARTICLE 4, DIVISION 3 OF THE BOUVAARD COUNTY CODE TO MAKE DATA CENTERS INELIGIBLE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND TAX EXEMPTIONS.

OKAY.

THANK YOU. AND THERE'S A SECOND. I'LL RACE SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR SAY YAY. YAY. CARES UNANIMOUSLY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. OKAY. I1, discussion state lobbying services. Do we have any cards? Kathy first.

Good evening Mr. Chair and commissioners. Tonight we're here to discuss state lobbying services and Mr. Steve is here to discuss his annual report. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. Steve Chris Foley, representing SBM Partners. As the agenda says, it's about the state lobbying contract, but we never discussed anything with regard to the legislative session. We discussed potentially doing that in July. Thank you for your grace in allowing us to do it at this meeting. In a nutshell, I sent each of y'all a breakdown of the legislative session. If you didn't get it from me, maybe Kathy or Jim sent that to you. So this year was the early session year, where session starts in January, finishes in March, and yet again, this year we finished the session without a budget. So governor called session back uh... legislation legislature back into session in the middle of may to work on a budget and at that time after little over two weeks uh... they were able to pass a hundred and seventeen and a half billion dollar budget that is half a billion dollars less than what it was two years ago so they did pull down and with that they put eighteen million dollars into uh... into rainy day fund so you know legislatures tightening its belt to in these tougher economic times Out of that, this session, we went in as a county with 12 appropriations requests across a range spectrum of transportation issues, water issues, and we were able to get six of those funded. Two of those did end up getting vetoed in the end. All in all, the county ended up with $6.87 million that was funded from the legislature. 500,000 of that was vetoed. The two items that were vetoed were the multi-basin study at Miramar, Martin, and Fisk, and then the signal at Cuttington and Stadium, which y'all are very aware of. Along with the county's request, the sheriff did put a request in this year for $5 million for his animals. ANIMAL CARE CENTER WHICH WE'RE ABLE TO GET THE FULL APPROPRIATION ON THAT AS SOME OF YOU WERE AT THE GROUNDBREAKING I BELIEVE IT WAS LAST WEEK AND THEN BEYOND THAT THE COUNTY THROUGH THE TRANSPORTATION WORK PROGRAM AND THE DIFFERENT GRANTS BROUGHT IN 281 AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS to the county to fulfill those needs. Besides that, it was a very slow year with regard to legislation. This year there was 1,896 measures that were filed and only 237 that were passed. 192 of those were general bills. So for those that have been familiar with that process, that's a very, very slow year. That's a lot of battling back and forth between the House and Senate on coming to terms on agreeing on the different issues. I THINK THE GREATEST VICTORY THAT THE COUNTY HAD IS BEING ABLE TO SECURE THE FUNDING THAT WE DID BASED ON A BUDGET THAT'S SMALLER THAN IT WAS TWO YEARS AGO AND KNOWING THAT THERE'S LESS RESOURCES IN THE DIFFERENT BUCKETS THAT THEY CREATE THAT CAN GO OUT TO THE COUNTIES. With that, the governor did end up vetoing just under a billion dollars of that. As I told you, 500,000 of it was issues that we had asked for funding on. And then, Commissioner Atkinson, I know an issue near and dear to you was the SB 180 glitch bill that the Senate passed unanimously but the House did not take up. Everybody wonders why. There's a lot of internal politics on that. I do know in speaking with the Senate sponsor that he is intending to bring that back again next year and under new leadership you may see a house that's more more interested in that issue this time around so with that again i'd sent you all the information on some of the different bills that may impact the county with regard to growth management you know water resources transportation those types of things but any questions happy to answer those for you

Okay. Thank you for being here and presenting to us and the hard work you put in during the legislative session. Thank you.

Thank you for y'all's communication throughout session. I mean, you know, always there to answer a call. And I know several of you I've talked to several times during session when there were questions, especially with the property tax, you know, issue on the ballot. I know Morris may have mentioned this, but the Attorney General does have 10 days to either appeal or change that language. So we will know in very short order what that's going to look like and if there's an appeal that does take place and how it's accepted versus the language change. So that is in short order for sure.

What happens if they don't agree, if the court rules again that it's improper?

They start to run out of time to get language through that's approved, but Amendment 3 will be on there. I'm sure they will get to a place where it's... Will the court write the language? I don't believe so.

Wow. That's going to be interesting. Okay, any questions? Do we have any questions on behalf of the board? What...

Maybe after the card, I'll ask Mike.

Say that again. You want to hear the card first?

We can hear the card, and then I'll ask the question. Okay, we'll do that. We'll get that out of the way.

We do have one card. Okay. So, Sandra Sullivan, do you want to speak now? Yeah. Commissioner Goodson, did you have a question? Why don't we let the public speak, and then we'll go to questions. No, sir.

uh... center solomon so you know i appreciate that mister christopher only as former house speaker has a great deal knowledge up in tallahassee brings a lot of expertise however uh... on the agenda there is an option to go out uh... to are p and uh... i do think that's the appropriate thing to do uh... And I'm just going to say, you know, there are a few conflicts. That recent 222-unit development, he was the lobbyist, as I understand, from online for that particular project and also with Health First. It does present a few potentially conflicts of interest. I also have a bit of heartburn with... What was it? $35,000? I don't know. It's been a while. That went to your PAC when you were running from his PAC that paid for, you know, thank you, Rob, for fighting for the lagoon, you know, stuff. It just, you know, you tried three times to get him as our county lobbyist from Runbook. I just think the fair and equitable thing is to go out to RFP, see what comes in, and make a an informed decision with everything in hand. I'm not negating his abilities, but I would like to just say one thing I've come up here and asked about. There's $130 to $197 million costs that you're looking at putting on We the People for the connection by Space Florida. I think the state and the feds need to pay for that. That's a significant amount of money that a promise was made here that that burden would not be put on the ratepayers and yet the budget indicates it's going to be put on the ratepayers probably after the election, right? So just not so good optics that really needs to be prioritized for funding so not to put that on us. Thank you very much.

That's the only card we have. Let's go back to any questions related to Well, shall I report? Go ahead.

I think I'm working it. I'm not sure if I'm working it right.

I just use that other one. That's what I do.

Which one? This one? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Christofoli, I want to thank you for all the work you've done. And as far as lobbyists, I think you're hitting it out of the park. I really appreciate you having so many connections up in the state of Florida. And you're nice, so they listen to you. So that's an extra bonus. Thank you for not raising your rates. So there's a lot of pluses to that. And a quick question. I'm sure it's not an issue because I asked the county attorney about this. There is not a conflict on the things that you're doing other work on as far as this job we have him doing, correct? All of those guidelines are pretty clear.

So there are two prohibitions in the current contract. One prohibits SBM from lobbying where there is the Board of County Commissioners where there's a conflict of interest. There's another that's just a blanket prohibition against SBM lobbying on behalf of private entities before the Board of County Commissioners, regardless of whether there's an actual conflict of interest. That's more of an optics provision than an ethics provision. If that remains within the contract, then in my opinion, Mr. Crisafulli in his capacity as a partner at SBM would not, consistent with the contract, be able to lobby on behalf of private entities before the board. So the board may wish to consider whether to keep that prohibition in or to eliminate it and leave only the, uh, prohibition of lobbying when there's an actual conflict of interest.

Okay. How long have you lived in Brevard County?

55 years.

You're fighting for your home. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you Speaker. Appreciate, um, appreciate everything that you've done for us. Um, I thought maybe take this moment to tell us about what we should anticipate with the implementing language. And we talked about the referendum tonight a little bit. And maybe since we're all here together, you could tell us that's going to happen in December. That's going to be during organizational session. It will be a special session. What we might anticipate.

process looking like. Yes. And Morris actually touched on it. The reality is there is a session of implementation when you put the language together. We've done this many a time on statewide initiatives that legislature has to come back and work on. Now the nuance to this one is you're going to have a new governor that will have been elected in November and you have an organizational session that starts November 18th. the likelihood of a special session for implementation, should it pass, would take place likely at that point in time or during the first committee week that they have now set in the second week of December, or the first week of December. So, you know, the question is, does the current governor want the ability to set the standard on what this initiative is going to be while working with the legislature, because it is important to recognize the governor doesn't pass legislation, he just approves it or denies it. And in this case, it's an implementation of a statewide amendment, and I don't know the answer to whether or not he gets a final say-so on what the initiative is, but he's certainly going to have... you know, a foot in the ring when it comes to having this discussion because this was his initiative to begin with. Now, having said that, you've got two new legislative leaders, Senator Boyd and Speaker Garrison, that will be coming in, and, you know, they have their own ideas as well. And I will tell you, you know, I'm certain that as they start polling this over – YOU KNOW, THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS, ESPECIALLY WITH THE CHANGE IN LANGUAGE. THAT WILL CERTAINLY CHANGE THE DYNAMICS AROUND, YOU KNOW, THE ABILITY FOR THIS TO PASS ON THE BALLOT. BUT AS THEY START POLLING IT, I WOULD TELL YOU, IF THEY START SEEING THE LIKELIHOOD THAT IT'S GOING TO HIT THE THRESHOLD OF 60% PLUS ONE, THEY WILL START, YOU KNOW, FORMULATING THEIR IDEAS ON HOW THEY'RE GOING TO MOVE FORWARD. Right now, I think it's anybody's guess. And as we know, polling, I can say this, y'all can't, but polling always starts higher and finishes lower. Just because people become more educated, they understand, they hear the impacts that it's going to have in their backyard, and certainly There's a conversation to be had on that around the state over the next couple months. I would be remiss if I did not mention Leader Soroy and Senator Mayfield and their help this year. They sponsored each and every one of these budget initiatives and worked diligently to get those passed, and I want to make sure I give them the proper credit as well as incoming Senator, President Boyd, who sponsored one of the dredging projects for us just because he likes Brevard County and wanted to see us have some success on that front. So I wanted to make sure I mention and give a little love to those folks as well. But Commissioner, there will be a session. It will be one that we'll all be intimately involved in if in fact there is a conversation that has to take place if a ballot initiative passes.

And I think something else to point out. I mean, tell me if I got it wrong, but a quarter of the legislature changes every other year.

Yes, that is correct. There's several people that will not be in that chamber that voted on this. And admittedly, a lot of representatives voted on this to give the people a voice. They didn't vote on it because they favored it or disfavored it. They voted on it to give people a voice on it because it has to go in the Constitution because of the way it's drafted. You know, so probably some of them are glad they're not going to be there to implement it, to be honest, but the truth is you're right. A third of that legislature that put it in place will be there to implement it should they have that opportunity to do so.

And I think it's shocking to think that you're sworn in and within a couple weeks of that you're there for a special session to implement. language that could be perhaps the most significant put in or referendum that goes before the voters in quite a long time. Absolutely. So certainly challenges ahead of us. For all of those reasons and for the good work that you've done for the county, I'd like to renew the contract. That would be my motion today. I'd second that.

Go ahead.

Mr. Chair, if I may, would you either address the issue of the prohibition on lobbying activities on behalf of private clients, or perhaps we'd like to hear from Mr. Christopher Lee on that issue?

Yeah, I'd like, I mean, I think some, there's a nuance to it as well. I don't represent SBM partners when I represent the local clients that I do. I represent them through Chris Foley Consulting. Now, that's a nuance, and you're the legal mind, and I don't know how that interacts, but I do not represent anybody before the county through SBM partners. I only represent folks through my Chris Foley Consulting company and never in a way that directly... is contrary to a stance that the county has on something, especially on a state issue. That's just not the way to do business. So I want to be clear on that nuance because I do have all of those folks contracted under Chris Foley Consulting.

And I'm just looking for the board's understanding of that provision and what the board's pleasure is with regard to that contractual issue, whether or not the board is okay with Mr. Chris Foley doing that kind of representation. Again, it's not an Ethical conflict, that's already addressed by a separate prohibition. It's just a blanket ban on all lobbying on private activities in the contract. And we can clarify that depending on the board's direction.

I think you had said something about when there's a clear conflict earlier, when a clear conflict presents itself.

Just when there's a conflict. That prohibition is in there. It's not going to change, but there is a secondary clause that no lobbying whatsoever, conflict or not, on behalf of a private client exists in the current SBM contract, and there is nuance as to whether or not that applies to You know, mr. Christopher these activities but for staffs For our direction moving forward, you know, is it the board's intention? That the consultant and mr. Christopher Lee cannot lobby on behalf of those private interests even when there is no conflict or would the board be amenable to modifying that language it sounds like we need to fix that that we only disallow lobbying if there's a direct conflict I would agree with that yeah so okay we can we can make that revision so is there a way to structure the motion so that we can make that clear if if the motion incorporates that just strike the blanket prohibition on lobbying activities and retain the prohibition on lobbying when there's a conflict of interest that'll be enough direction okay

You want me to restate that? So my motion would be to renew the contract, strike the blanket prohibition, and keep the other prohibition.

That only addresses when there's a direct conflict. When there's a direct conflict. Perfect. You're okay with that? Okay.

And I second that.

Is the motion second? Okay. Any discussion? All in favor say yay. Yay.

Yay.

Carries unanimously. It's going to be an interesting year. It will. Thank you.

Look forward to it. Okay.

Thank you. All right. Next item, J2. I'm J1. I need to get my Wheaties tonight or something. I don't know. Maybe because I haven't had dinner. But J1. J1. Eddie? Hi.

Commissioner, this is an item about...

I tell you, before we go on, and I agree with this, we've gone over our time for a normal break. Let's do a quick 10-minute break, because we do have quite a few cards, and we'll be back at 6.55. Thank you.

Music Music Music 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 Okay. Okay.

All right, we'll proceed. Thank you for your patience. J1, proposed donation of real property from Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District to Beauvoir County for use by the Beauvoir County Utility Services Department to facilitate design and construction of a new advanced water and wastewater treatment facility. Okay, Eddie.

Thank You Commissioner so what this is is as we're currently in the process of designing the what we're calling South Brevard water and wastewater treatment plant which is ultimately not only going to serve South Brevard within the utility Brevard County Utilities Service area but it's also going to also be the replacement for the barefoot Bay water and wastewater treatment plant As we're going through this, some of the design consists of the design being barefoot bay water and wastewater, water and sewer district property, but these projects are being funded by the county, on the county-wide system. There are occasions when we fill out grant applications, they ask who owns the property, and so the feedback that we were getting from some agencies were, When we say it's a Brevard County project, but it's the Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District, it kind of gives a sense that we might not have the full entity of it. So given the fact that in three and a half years that Barefoot Bay is going to sunset and to give us hopefully a better opportunity in achieving grant funds, which asks this question, we're asking... the board two things and i guess it's two parts we're asking you all as the governing board of the barefoot bay water sewer district to donate the property and we're asking for you as the board of county commissioners to accept it okay we have three cards j1 henna willander

Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Hannah Willander. I am a customer of the Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District. I'm addressing Agenda Item J1, the proposed donation of real property from Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District to Brevard County for use by the Brevard County Utility Services Department to facilitate design and construction activities. of a new advanced wastewater treatment facility. There are, as I can tell, four properties that are being proposed to donate for $10. The property fact sheet has an additional piece of property. which was not shown on any map that I could tell. It's 30G-38-01-HJ-asterix31, and it's assessed value is $12 million. The land, my investigation revealed that the valued amount of the properties that were being asked to donate, or that the Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District is being proposed to donate, is valued at $14,963,430. The original purchase price, which varies from 1974, 1985, 95, 96, the total of the purchase prices was $1,077,800. These figures were based on the 2025 property slash real estate amounts today and were obtained from the Brevard County Property Appraiser website. So this is a huge amount of money that is going to be donated. Meanwhile, Barefoot Bay and other impacted communities continue to pay for the existing plant and the land. So as you previously heard under F7, since I'm taking notes on my notes, so bear with me, it's a mess. Since 2022, customers of Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District have been paying towards the new treatment plant as we understand it, as well as the current one, which we owe still $4 million, I believe. And there was a 54% increase in our rates over the five-year period, which was addressed under item F7. The land value alone, I believe, should offer the customers of Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District some relief. And so, let's see, I did have one question, if I may ask. How much have customers of Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District paid currently towards the bond, the existing bond, outstanding amount, or existing bond? Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Cindy.

Cindy James. Good evening, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. I am flabbergasted. Mr. Fontanen just said that the new facility is going to be, the cost will be borne by the county because it will be, I assume, because it's going to be part of the countywide system. I want to share some documents. I wish I had the overhead, but I'll hand these to you after. This is from January 14, 2022, when the rates got raised by these double digits. It says, one of the reasons why, in order to utilize the new facility for not only Barefoot Bay customers, but also unincorporated future development, The decision was made to locate the new facility outside of the barefoot bay water and sewer boundaries. This will make the new facility part of the countywide system. So that has been in the plan at least since January 14, 2022, that this new facility would be in the countywide system. Then it says... print the proposed rate adjustments of the twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six thirty five percent would go to cover their rights in operating maintenance costs while the majority or remaining sixty five percent of all of these raising these increases Again, 54% over five years. 65% of those increases will be associated with the need for capital reinvestment. The only capital reinvestment in this document is all the new facility. We've been paying 65% of our rate increases have been going towards paying for this new facility, which now you're saying is not going to be in the... Barefoot Bay Water and Treatment is going to be in this brand new thing. That means we have been paying and we will be paying on two at the same time. Yet he just said that the new facility is going to be borne by the county, the cost to build. Why have we paid so much? How much have we paid? May 9, 2024 audit. The department plans to build a water and wastewater system, new system, outside the Barefoot Bay District. The district will be decommissioned when this new system is completed in about five to six years from now, May 9, 2024. Five to six years from now is before 2030 or 2029 when it's supposed to be decommissioned. It's supposed to be built by them. and it says uh... once that new systems operational it will be provided all of our requirements will be provided by the new system i'm just confounded how you can take the lien from the barefoot the water to a district which haunted just said it's almost a value of fifteen million transfer it and then all the money we've been paying to build a new system now is going to be born by the county and then Do we get a refund?

Next speaker, Terry Brewer.

Mr. Chairman, fellow commissioners, I'm sure you've seen this. The map is of the proposed purchase properties in the Barefoot Bay Sewer District, which is outlined in blue. The purchase properties are in red. And as you've heard from the previous speakers, the valuation of that property has gone up by millions. It just seems inconceivable that elected representatives representing all of us in Brevard County Sewer District, as well as the rest of the county, could look at this and say, they paid for that. $10, oh, that's fair. I just can't believe that. It's inconceivable that we don't get credit for what we invested in to going towards what we're gonna be paying in the future. I'm sorry, think about that, sleep on it.

Okay. Thank you. Those are our cards. And this is a handout. I think we have one copy here. We'll get that to the proper place. I assume you want all of us to have this? To the clerk? Yeah.

Okay.

All right. Okay. That concludes our cards on this item. Is there a motion?

Can I ask a couple questions? Because I've missed a bit of this. And just from listening to the comments, are we making them go on the county system? I think there was communication a long time ago when we were doing this. They had their own water system, so... My question is, if they've got this land, maybe we should not be doing this and let them figure out how to build a plant since they've got the funds. I don't know. I'm just asking questions. Ms. Atkinson, I think it was really good that you did an audit making sure we weren't overcharging fees and get it back. I have to go study this a little more. It's a little bit different than what I remember. So that's just a question out there. Are we doing a disservice to them or did they want to do this? So that's just if you give me a little background, that would be great.

You know what? I'm going to let Eddie answer that because clearly he has all of the numbers and the the history about how this all happened because technically it happened before I got here.

I remember a long time ago they had the bonds and I think the county bailed out some, some bond issues and help with that.

But I didn't know if we did something different here recently. So as far as I understand right now, we have in this particular agenda item, we are donating the land. and then accepting the land. And I'm going to let Eddie address why we have to do that.

Well, for accepting the land, is it for us to build a water plant for these residents?

So the idea, Commissioner, we had an agenda item a month or two ago where not Barefoot Bay, not a donation, but Brevard County purchased an 80-acre parcel off of Doughty Drive. Purchase price, I believe, was $5 million. We did that through county funds. The idea of this is, is that, um, we are, we're looking, first of all, the barefoot baby water and wastewater plant fall under the jurisdiction of our department as being a Brevard County utility services asset. So, and the deciding factor of that is that you all, because you act as the governing board of the barefoot Bay water sewer district, The idea of this is as we're moving forward with the design, we could have done, like a bulk sewer, a bulk water agreement between Barefoot Bay and the county. We chose not to. That way, we were just going to blend them in with it and incur the cost of that through the countywide system, given the fact that they're now going to be sunset. So the whole idea was just to clean up some of the design components of this. Can we wait till 2030, I suppose? But as we've, we received an FDEP grant application and that they were asking who owns the land and it causes some confusion in Tallahassee when you put who the entity is and the landowner isn't the same. So we see this as an opportunity that the investments we're gonna be making at these facilities would absolutely, we could start implementing that to kind of get a running start on that.

Do you know what the estimated cost is going to be to get this plant rebuilt and up running?

So right now, the water and wastewater treatment plant, we are looking tentatively now at around $150 million. But I wouldn't be surprised if it goes higher. We went out and solicited for a construction manager at risk, which means we now have a contractor on board. They're already given us early estimations. We're only about like 15, 20% in the design. We're still in permitting and whatnot. But this is absolutely gonna be, $150 million. The initial capacity is really the replacement of what Barefoot Bay has. So there will be the option to add on capacity as development outside of the Barefoot Bay district grows. But really, this is really the investment on replacing the water and sewer capacity from their plants. Their plants do not meet DEP regulations. They are not advanced wastewater treatment, which means our current wastewater plant exceeds the nutrient limits for effluent. The investment due to the age of that, and believe me, we've put money in it over the 20 years to kind of revamp it, but this latest of it now being advanced wastewater treatment, due to the age and whatnot, we made the decision that we need to go new on the facility. On the water side, they're already at capacity essentially on the water side. And due to the PFAS requirement, they don't have the technology at that water plant in order to do the PFAS removal. So the new water plant is gonna be a reverse osmosis, which is literally the cleanest you can get water to be.

That's good. So for 150 million, With the amount of customers on it, how long is it going to take to recoup the amount of money we're spending building a new plant?

From the Barifa Bay waters? No.

Maybe I can get it from you later. That's an interesting question. Because then all the rate payers are going to have to try to cover the new plant, too.

Because once we looked at it, we're really looking at it as it getting melted in.

Because we are going to need some more capacity up in the north area, too, so you guys know in the future coming up. But thank you, sir. That's expensive.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair?

Okay, yes.

So if I understand correctly, Morris, please correct me if I'm wrong, we have to make the motion as the governing board, and then the second motion has to be as the Board of County Commissioners.

It would be two motions. You'll wear your hats first as the governing board of the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District and make a motion to donate the property, and then you'll change hats to Board of County Commissioners and accept the property. And just to be clear, regardless of whether you do this now, when the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District sunsets in 2029 by operation of statute, all of its assets are going to come to the county anyway.

Exactly.

This is not anything sinister. It's accelerating it now for purposes of Eddie and utilities ability to make grant applications and start that money to make it better for the new plan. Yes.

So if there's no other discussion, I'd like to make a motion.

Yes.

As the governing board of the Barefoot Bay Water and Sewer District, I move to approve the donation of the property currently owned by the BFBWSD, and as further described in the attached deed, to Brevard County.

I second that.

There's a second to the motion. Any discussion? All in favor say yay.

Yay. Yay.

Yay.

Occasionally. Thank you.

So my second motion would be as the board of County commission, um, of Brevard County. Um, I would like to accept the donation. Is there a better way to say that?

That's exactly right.

Okay. I moved to accept the donation.

Jim, did you have, yeah. And, uh, madam commissioner, if you can also authorize the chair to execute the attached deed, conveying the property described there into Brevard County, I would like to include that in my motion.

Does that include in the second?

Yes. Yes, sir.

Okay. Any discussion? All in favor say yay. Yay.

Yay. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Mr. Atkins, good job on that. That's a good job for your district.

I don't know if they know. They don't.

What you're doing.

Say that publicly. What she pulled off for her district up there is pretty phenomenal. So good job.

Okay. I think they left. That's a tough issue. We appreciate all the effort that you're doing for your constituents down there. Anything we can do to help. Because we certainly listen to them. Okay. Item J2.

Good evening. Item J2 is a request for a letter of support. For the Housing Authority of Brevard County, disposition of Lake View Point to Space Coast Community Development Corporation, the Housing Authority's non-profit affiliate. Lakeview Point was constructed in 1964 and consists of 56 public housing units serving low-income households. The property's age, deteriorating infrastructure, and functional limitation is affecting the Housing Authority's ability to provide quality housing efficiently. The Housing Authority development strategy is to transfer ownership of Lakeview Point to Space Coast Community Development Corporation, request tenant protection vouchers and permission to demo from HUD, Once all tenants have been relocated, then demolished, Then demolish the lake viewpoint. Lake viewpoint redevelopment construction would be in the late 2029 to mid 2030. Future redevelopment will include no fewer than 56 affordable units. Subject to HUD's approval and final relocation plan, the Housing Authority will provide effective residents with all notices, advisory services, relocation assistance, and moving assistance, and comparable housing opportunities required by HUD.

Okay. Any questions? Is there a motion? Oh, we have cards. Okay. Richard Heffelfinger. Rick Heffelfinger, Mr. Kwan, 2000 Juniper Drive.

This one, it really... I don't usually get involved with public housing or any of that stuff because we won't go into why I don't. This is confusing because I don't understand... It looks like you are taking something that is funded by Brevard County through housing development dollars that are given, I guess, primarily by the state, and they're running this development, or they own it. I don't know. Do you own it? So you own it. Maintain it as low in... Okay, head shake, you don't own it. You manage it. It's managed to be... Nope, don't manage it. Keep going, Morris. I'm learning more as you shake your head. So my question is, the way you're shaking your head, I really appreciate trying to figure out what's going on because it looks like the housing wants to punt, and they want to punt to a private entity because there's some advantage to punting to a private entity. Now, as far as I know, right... housing, it's a non-profit when it's kind of public housing. Are you punting? Are they going to get some profit advantage by knocking it down, building it up? Are they going to replace the same number of units for low-income housing? Are the costs going to be higher?

It's going to be better. Let's hear all the cards and we'll have staff answer the questions that come up.

And who owns who? Supposedly this outfit, Space Coast Community Development Corporation, is actually part of HABC now? Yeah, it's just confusing. And it sounds like that, who owns it now, like we were talking about the water plant? Does that special district own it? So I'm wary of that kind of shenanigans. What could possibly be the advantage? Somebody's going to get an advantage. That's my question.

Next speaker, Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan. So I was just going to say, so in 1950, the county formed this entity of HABC, the Housing Authority of Brevard County, as a quasi... governmental thing. But when you go and you look up on SunBiz, there's no such entity. If you look at who is, and I sent an email earlier, when you go to SunBiz, You've got all these businesses here at 1401 Guava Avenue in Melbourne, the location, which are these two of the entities who you want to convey this property to that you say is a wholly owned non-profit affiliate. But then when you look up who this guy is, he's associated with a lot of developments, not just in Florida, but outside of Florida. And This looks stinky, I'm just going to say. It's like HABC doesn't exist, according to SunBiz, and yet there's 374 properties that are all in the Housing Authority of Brevard County in the property appraisers, and now we're going to do something unprecedented. Now, We're going to put it into another entity, but there's nothing to support that it's wholly owned nonprofit affiliate. So I would ask that you defer this for today until there's additional documents put up. But I'll just say, you know, coming here to these meetings for eight years and the stink, and I'm just not happy with Pritchett being back on the board appointed, given some of the stinky stuff that has gone on in having to come to these meetings and disclose that. You know, $30 million to Driftwood, you know, I can list off a long list of, oh, no, you know, I'm looking at the agenda again and roll my eyes. Like, not again. The next four months is just going to be hell, I think. District one.

Okay, thank you. I'm actually looking forward to them. I am. Okay, that's our public cards. And how about the questions? Do we have some answers? Jim?

I'll just jump in. All we're doing is asking for, as the subject says on the agenda, letter of support for the Housing Authority of Brevard County. They're not part of us. They have the name Brevard County. They're not Brevard County. They're a housing authority that you find pretty much everywhere across the country. They have their own nonprofit to work on the development. So all we're doing is they're looking for letter of support from us. Okay.

I would like to make a motion to approve the requested action.

There's a motion and a second for approval of the requested letter of support to this month, and that's part of the cycle for each tax year, that August orientation. So I just need the board to please elect two of your members to serve on that board and one to serve as chair. Currently, Commissioners Atkinson and Altman serve on the board, with Chair Altman serving as the chairperson of the Value Adjustment Board. This is for the next cycle that begins in August. It begins this month.

Okay, is there a motion? Does the board have any? I'm willing to continue. It's up to the board.

I'm willing to continue, but I would really like you to stay as chair only because you grabbed hold of the thing and nobody seemed to know what they were doing until you started asking questions.

Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate your willingness.

Would you consider staying as chair?

I'll be willing to do that.

OK, do you want separate motions, Morris?

I think you can do it either way.

I will make the motion for our chairman graciously being the chair, again, of the Value Adjustment Board, and for Commissioner Atkinson to be the second commissioner on the VAB.

All in favor say yay. Yay. Carries unanimously. Thank you, I think. No, it's an honor to serve. Thanks. Next item, J4, permission to advertise request for proposal to solicit competitive sealed proposals to furnish septic to individual distributed wastewater treatment systems within Brevard County, Florida. Do we have cards? I think we'd have some speakers here.

A couple questions and then speakers.

Okay. We have Jeff Littlejohn. For questions only, Herschel Vineyard, questions only, and James Morris, and then Richard Helfinger. Let's hold the first two cards because I think we will have questions. Well, maybe let's hear them first. So speakers will have a little bit of, yeah. I have some questions. I'd love for Jeff and Herschel to maybe give a quick summary, very simple, of the promise that this new technology may have in terms of environmental benefits as well as giving landowners a choice, as well as maybe some of the new innovative technology that I'm excited about. that we're bringing to wastewater treatment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission. My name is Herschel Vineyard. My colleague is Jeff Littlejohn. We're here on the distributed wastewater issue, obviously. Historically, you've had three choices on how to get rid of domestic wastewater. You've got septic recognized it in statute and in fact adopted a expedited permitting process for distributed wastewater because they want to put this out in the field as fast as they can because the technology works and they want to get this permitted in lieu of septic tanks. And one quick question, rather than the sending all the wastewater back to a central location. The wastewater is treated in the system in your yard, and it is dispersed in your yard.

Okay. Jeff, did you have anything to add? No? Okay. That's a good job. One of the things that truly excites me about this technology is that it is a fourth alternative that we don't have And one of the things that we have at Onside Sewage Treatment, septic tanks, is they're put in and then they just are in never, never land. You don't really know, are they working? You don't know when they're failing. I remember I was in the Florida Senate when we passed the legislation really trying to grab a hold of the septic tank problem. And it required annual inspections with a lot of fees and it was It was a solution, but not a solution like this. And it was very, very controversial because of the expense to the consumer, because of the cost of having the impact, the cost of overseeing, regulating them, reviewing them, making sure they're working. We're taking advantage of internet technology, of digital technology. maybe eventually AI technology to have these septic facilities or on-site wastewater treatment facilities that are continually monitored as they would in a public sewer treatment plant at very little cost. I think this is just the beginning of a new wave of how we address our septic impact problems. As well, there's some ways that this is even superior to sanitary sewer system. We all know what happens so often in the times of hurricane, storm, flood, flooding, where pump stations get overwhelmed, they back up. That's happened numerous times. This could prevent that from happening because in the times of storms, most of that wastewater is confined into the tanks. SO I'M EXCITED ABOUT IT. ALSO, IF YOU LOOK IN THE AGENDA PACKAGE, YOU SEE LARGE PORTIONS OF BEVAR COUNTY ARE NOW UNDER A MORTAL ARM DUE TO A FEDERAL JUDGE, WHERE LANDOWNERS HAVE NO OPTION, DEPROVATION OF THEIR OWN PERSONAL PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, EVEN VERY LARGE SITES ARE LIMITED FROM USE, AND THIS GIVES CONSUMERS A THIRDLY, I THINK ULTIMATELY IF WE DON'T FIX THIS PROBLEM, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE SOME SIGNIFICANT IMPACTS TO OUR REVENUE STREAM BECAUSE AT SOME POINT IF YOU CAN'T USE YOUR PROPERTY, YOUR THREE-ACRE SITE FOR ANYTHING, YOU ARE GOING TO SEE SOME SIGNIFICANT REDUCTIONS IN OUR ASSESSED VALUATION. SO I'M EXCITED ABOUT IT. I'M EXCITED ABOUT THE FUTURE AND I THINK A COUNTY LIKE BEAVARD WHICH IS SO STATE OF THE ART WITH SPACE AGE TECHNOLOGY, It's appropriate that we become one of the leaders. That said, we're not the leader. This is also, Hershel, you didn't mention, there are other counties already embarking upon this and doing this technology.

Yes, sir.

Lake County, which doesn't have a utility at all, has essentially banned septic tanks in most circumstances in their county. And they're directing, say, a new development comes along. Like I said, they don't have a wastewater utility and they direct it to distributed wastewater treatment as the solution. I think earlier today Santa Rosa County just signed on for this technology. They also don't have a wastewater utility. So we're excited about the technology and Say there's an industrial computer that runs it. You mentioned it is monitored 24-7 and controlled. So off-site, a licensed wastewater treatment utility operator, if they see that there's a problem with the system in your yard, they can actually override what goes on with the system and make sure the water is treated properly.

Even if you have a leaky faucet or a toilet running, the bells and whistles can go off and that homeowner can be notified. It's really exciting. Can I ask a question? Yes, go ahead.

What would be the difference between this and an advanced sewer system? Because I'm guessing you're a compact system, so I think this would be a good thing for us to understand what is the similarities, what's the difference, and which one does a better job.

Sir, the biggest issue is the ability to monitor and control the system off-site where an advanced treatment unit is a septic tank with some bells and whistles. There's no monitoring, there's no control, and also with the distributed wastewater to meet the definition of the Florida legislature that they established, there's actually got to be monthly reporting of the water quality that's leaving the unit that's made to DEP each month. So just like your own utility has to make their monthly reporting to DEP, so does the units that are involved that are distributed wastewater. I'll turn it over to Jeff Littlejohn, who's actually a professional engineer, and maybe can add to that.

Commissioner, thank you. Great question. I think Herschel covered it very well for an attorney, so he gives me credit for being an engineer. But honestly, that's a pretty good answer. I think the primary benefit of having that continuous monitoring and then monthly testing is you get reasonable assurance that you're actually getting the nutrients out of the system, that you're paying for if you're contributing taxpayer funds to a program like this, or if a homeowner is paying for this type of technology, or if a new developer is paying for this type of technology, the state, and in this case the county, would have the assurance that the wastewater is actually being treated to that high standard because it's verified every month.

Mr. Altman, you just came off the state of Florida. Did you guys, I've been gone a while, ever do anything to make it so that homeowners had to get inspections done on their septics?

Well, we passed the law back in, gosh, about 10 years ago, 12 years, Senator Constantine's bill. That required that. It was a revolt against it because of the fees, the cost of getting inspectors out there. I forget if it was annual or by annual. I forget often. And even in between inspections, you really don't know what's going on. And it was repealed, I think, the very next year. It didn't get very far.

We didn't go very far on that one. No, no.

Shot out of the saddle. But this is far superior to that. I might say, too, I've been incredibly impressed with the team that Onsite has put together. Herschel, former director of the DEP, Jeff, a very knowledgeable engineer. You have operators of large or pretty respectable sewer treatment facilities. And that said, we're not committed to them. It's forcing them to go out and selectively bid. So we will spin the word out and we'll see and it will come back to us and we'll review the proposals.

It sounds good. Is there any downfalls to this that would just be any kind of hesitation with it that we have to overcome?

Commissioner, great question.

I know you don't want to tell me that.

No, honestly, I was trying to think of what would be a downside. I mean, it's a more complex piece of technology than a conventional septic tank, certainly. It's a more complex piece of technology than an advanced septic tank. It's a miniature wastewater treatment plant. So there's... multiple pumps, a blower, a computer, there are things that fail. The good news is it is continuously monitored by professionals so when failures occur we know about it immediately. We don't rely on the homeowner to tell us there's an alarm going off or my toilet won't flush. It's remotely controlled and monitored so that a technician can be dispatched to fix it. So I think if there's a downside maybe we're sending technicians to people's Neighborhoods and homes and knocking on the door and saying hey, can I fix your wastewater plant in your backyard? You know maybe a little bit more visitation, but honestly that you know whether you think of that as a downside or an upside It's assurance that your equipment is working before it backs up in your living room, you know and

And to further answer your question, one of the larger or the bigger near-term advantages is you heard the presentation about your new advanced wastewater treatment plant. It's $150 million. It's going to take multiple years to bring that system online. This is something that you could do in 30 days at an individual home. And so the opinion that the lagoon can't wait This is immediate technology that you could deploy at a far lower cost.

It's very interesting to me. Up in District 1, we have a lot of property right now. Actually, someone called me. They were going to buy a place on Berkholm, but were told not a good time to buy because you can't build a house because you can't put in a septic system. So we've kind of got a lot of stuck areas up in District 1 right now. So it's something we're trying to figure out what to do to help. I wish this whole thing would just go away, but I can't control judges. But whoever brought this up, it's interesting. Thanks.

When I heard about this, I got excited. I've been worried sitting on the value adjustment board. It's a time bomb. If this Bear Warrior case is not overturned, there's an economic time bomb waiting to go off when all these properties, thousands of acres, suddenly are undevelopable. You know, I've never ceased to amaze me the power of a federal judge. I've asked our general counsel to explain it to me, but it's scary to think how one individual can just shut down a county. And Morris has tried to educate me, but it's a It's amazing. You think of all the rulemaking and all the studies and all the land use planning and all the things you do to properly plan for a growth or septic services to think just a single individual can just decide, oh, I'm going to shut it down. And it has gone before, what, an 11-judge panel, I think, in Atlanta that we're waiting.

It went before the 11th Circuit in April for oral argument, and they have not. unless it happened today or yesterday if I had issued an opinion. I'm sure I would have heard by now, had they?

I think if there's a downside, and I don't think there's any, but if there were, one is it's new technology, so it's not proven. We are pioneers here. I think it's proven technology, but the implementation hasn't been done, so we want to be cutting edge. Second, and it is, it may be an advantage, it can be a little bit of a disadvantage, but it might turn out to be a big advantage. It doesn't, it does a better job than traditional subcutaneous in getting the phosphorus out, but we haven't completely fixed the phosphorus challenge, which is so tough on the lagoon. But I'm understanding there's research being done that this solution may even, be able to address the problem with phosphorus, which would be huge in terms of the lagoon and quality. So we're hopeful with that.

Yes, Commissioner. Thank you for bringing up phosphorus. The city of Apopka, which also runs a distributed wastewater treatment system program similar to the one we've been talking about, they received an innovative technology grant from DEP. We're partnering with the city to study a phosphorus removal modification to our existing technology that would strip the phosphorus out. We are very optimistic. We've done a lot of testing. We believe we're going to pass with flying colors, and then we'll have a unit for nitrogen only, and we'll have a unit for nitrogen and phosphorus.

That's great.

Who's going to own the units in the future? You put it in the ground... Then who owns it?

It would be the county. The way the state has set up the permitting process, they all have to be commonly owned and operated. And so in this case, it would be a county. If this was a new development, theoretically it could be an HOA or a CDD that could own it. But in this instance, it would be the county. Jeff and I both have a background at DEP. And what we've found in our time there, specifically with the BATUs, the snazzy septic tanks, homeowners make terrible wastewater plant operators. And so that's why you've got to put it in the hands of a government or an HOA, a more responsible entity.

So you talked about a technician having to come in the future, okay? And so when that happens, the county utility services is gonna pay for that?

We can offer that as a turnkey thing. Of course, it'll be in, I guess, the RFP is that worked out, but we have people that do that.

Just 10 years from now, the unit's been in the ground. There's some kind of an issue. Technician comes out and services the unit. That's gonna be Brevard County Utility Services that's gonna get the bill. We own it. We own it. So we're going to get the bill.

Commissioner Felton, it's a great question. The structure that has made the most sense with our other municipal partners, so Lake County, Santa Rosa County, City of Apopka, is that the county owns and operates the equipment as it does with a lift station or collection system or central plant. The homeowners that receive service from that utility-owned wastewater infrastructure receive a sewer bill. So the sewer bill that the homeowner pays for receiving public sewer service covers the ongoing cost of operation, repair, replacement, testing, compliance, everything. So our role as a contract provider in all of those scenarios is we service all of the equipment in accordance with our contract with our municipal partner, in accordance with all of our regulatory requirements from DEP. We do not charge the county something additional if something breaks. That's just part of a standard service agreement. It's a fixed fee model. And we cover everything for that fixed fee. Again, we're gonna describe all of this if we have an opportunity to respond to this RFP. But the homeowner doesn't have to pay anything other than the monthly sewer bill as if they were attached to.

And if I may make a point. I know those are good questions. You have more. This is all by choice. It's something the consumer chooses. We're not inflicting onto anybody the system. It's a landowner or a property owner or a homeowner that chooses to have the system And what's interesting is that it's really very cost-competitive with some of the state-of-the-art or the non-state-of-the-art on-site treatment systems. What really motivated me this, and obviously getting calls from people that can't even use their land, and some of these land, I mean, two or three unit acre lots, but I purchased a home in Lake Poinsett that had one of these so-called new systems and was horrified. I was horrified how poorly the system worked, how often it broke, how it would just, the pumps would quit running or not stop running and just dump sewage out. I was like, I always thought these new systems were so great and they're not. And then and not knowing if they were working or not working. And then thirdly, how unresponsive and how expensive these private septic tank companies are in maintaining the systems and the lack of ability for the even service. And the money you spend, it's kind of the Wild West, and they're simply not working. And this really is, I think, an exciting alternative. And we'll see how it works. It's a test. I guess it's an innovative solution that may have paid great dividends.

We had a very good meeting in my office, and you explained it. And so considering building a new home and you have this federal issue that may be impeding you, this is a way to be able to build your home, put this system in, Now, to put it in the ground, the homeowner is going to pay that bill?

Well, the way we have typically done it is they would pay the local government a monthly fee, just like homeowners on the county sewer system. They would pay the monthly fee, and then we would contract with the county to operate, maintain, service it.

What's the upfront cost? Let's just say, I'm just going to use round numbers. One of these things costs $30,000. Um, on, on a property. Okay.

Less than that, right? Yes.

$20,000, $20,000 that goes in the ground. Who gets the bill for, for that? Um, the county.

So it pays the 20,000 and then in the case of a new construction that would be born by the homeowner, but that would be in exchange, you know, they're going to build a house. So it just like the countertops are born by the homeowner. so is the wastewater system in that case. In other areas where we've done septic to sewer, DEP is actually funding grants for homeowners to convert from septic systems over to distributed wastewater treatment systems.

I understand. Okay, so on a new construction, the homeowner, just like they would a septic tank, they have that expense. And then they'll get a sewer bill from the county for the maintenance of it, if you will. And then when there is maintenance and potentially you come out, you bill the county. You bill the county, we charge them a sewer fee.

It's built into the bulk fee that we would charge the county. So it's not like, unless the homeowner, for example, damaged, it's like if your kid takes a baseball bat to your electric meter, that's not covered in your normal electric fees. But if it's just, if a pump goes out, something like that, the typical things that go wrong, that would be covered in the monthly fee that the homeowner pays to the county.

Okay. Well, we talked a lot of technical issues when you came to meet with me. I'm sure there will be more as we move along. But that's all I have for tonight. Thanks.

We do have two cards. Any questions?

I'm interested in it. I'm working out all the financial details. I wonder if any of this would qualify for some lagoon funds since it's an upgrade on what we're doing with the advanced septic because we did that for a long time with the advanced septics. That might be something to help homeowners because that would be hard to digest $20,000 for, I guess it is.

We think it would. You're talking about the specific lagoon tax that you all have. It's certainly something that DEP is funding today. My suspicion is, and I'll defer to your lawyer, is the the language that allows you to spend money could cover this.

Either that or we've got to give Eddie a lot more money so he can build a whole other system in North Brevard.

Yeah. Why don't we hear, we have two cards.

Thank you all.

Thank you. Thank you. We might have more questions after we hear the cards. Do we have more than two cards? Just two. Just two, okay. James Morris?

Good evening. My name is James Morris. Me and my wife live up in Port St. John. We actually are on the other side of this. We bought a property about five years ago in Merritt Island. We saved up. We're both firefighters. My wife was working as a nurse during COVID as well. We buy our property. We're working on trying to build. We had some hurdles, got set back by the interest rates going up. And right when we finally found the right builder, everything lined up for us. Our builder tells us, hey, you can't get a permit. So as you can imagine, this is supposed to be our forever home. I started digging. I started calling around, trying to see, are we really in this moratorium? A corner of our lot on Merritt Island falls right inside that line. Again, setbacks. But in that talks, I again spoke with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and they actually suggested this as well. I am thankful, I'm here to say thank you for looking at this. As you know, without it, I can't build our family home that we want to live forever in, cannot happen, unless that federal judge overturns it. Obviously, I think we'd all be frustrated. I'm just here to say thank you. Thank you for working with anybody who's willing to find solutions, and thank you for trying to help us. I will say, even without the moratorium after learning about the wastewater treatment systems, me and my wife have talked about it, we would like to do it either way. Like you were saying, Chairman, the fact that it's monitored, I know it's working. They're reporting levels to the DEP. And on top of that, my sewer bill for, I think, when we talked to them, I think they said probably about 50 bucks. Covers all, again, Commissioner Feltner, covers all the maintenance and stuff and any repairs included. Like, to me, it's a win-win, especially with Amendment 3 coming down, the talks of all the budgets, wastewater needs, the new facility being $150 million. It's costing the county nothing, but giving us the ability to build our home. So, thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for your service and your wife's as well. Okay, Richard Heffelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. My biggest question is, why is District 5 Chair, are you having to raise this and bring this as something that we consider? This sure sounds sorrelish. Unless it is, the objective is to beat the septic moratorium or whatever about that. Does this system qualify that you can put this in and beat that right now? If it doesn't, then you need to find that out first because this is going to cost, if I understand it right, see if I do, these guys are here and they can tell me, I have a standard septic system and I love it and it works. You want to know why I know it works? Because the crap don't back up in my shower and when it doesn't, the crap backs up in my shower. I have it pumped. It's inspected. My system is working. The leach field is now. Does it meet current code requirements? No. Because if I had to, I should be so many more inches above the resting groundwater. And it needs to be bigger, I've been told, because I thought about modifying it and immediately decided not to because they said you'd have to come up to code. So I know it's not the best. But I've got an acre. And as long as our density doesn't get too high, the earth can handle a certain amount, right? We get density higher. We can't. So we need these more efficient systems. Now, Sorrel is going and spending a lot of money of Sorrel money to install these. I think on this chart that was attached to this, they're installing the enhanced nitrogen reduction septic performance-based treatment system. Is that true? Would you guys know? All right. So that's what they're installing. And Sorrel's paying for some of that. Now, I realize that's probably only if you're in the Sorrel high-risk area to try to, because your leachant would go into the groundwater, close to the river, get the river. So that's, you know, we want to do that. This system sounds like it is much more, it's superior in performance. And this would be a good thing for Sorrel to be researching to say, let's get the max hit for the money. Well, let me see. Does it, well, no, you guys are a little lower. I assume that on this chart, you're the private package treatment plants? No. No. What numbers are yours where we don't know what they are?

Now, why don't you address your comments to the...

I just want to make sure that I'm pairing apples and oranges.

Give your questions to the public.

Okay. So they're actually not quite as good as enhanced nitrogen for removing nitrogen. Is that true? I don't understand. So the homeowner has a leach field and these guys just put sensors on it?

Oh, I think these are wonderful questions, and I think if we go proceed with the RFP, we're going to have a lot of data and time to answer them. You asked the question, why District 5? Well, I'm looking at a map of the five districts of county commissioners, because we all represent the county. I have massive areas of land in my district. Actually, this affects all five commissioners. It's a huge impact on the county, like Brevard. So WHAT REALLY INSPIRED ME WAS I HAVE THREE WONDERFUL KIDS AND TWO WONDERFUL GRANDKIDS. THEY'RE AT THE AGE OF TRYING TO BUY HOMES AND START THEIR LIVES. THEY HAVE FRIENDS. AND THEY CALL ME. THEIR FRIENDS ARE CALLING THEM AND CALLING ME. YOUR DAD'S A COUNTY COMMISSIONER. I JUST INVESTED MY LIFE SAVINGS. MY WIFE AND I JUST GOT MARRIED. WE WANT TO HAVE A FAMILY. WE LITERALLY CAN'T EVEN build now on a lot that we just bought, just as the testimony that we just had from James. And just tragic and stealing people their dream. So that was really the motivation for me. And then secondly, having a home that has one of these so-called new systems and seeing how poorly they operate and how bad the industry is and how difficult it is. And then thirdly, the impacts on the lagoon. There's a lot of reasons that I personally got involved and did a lot of due diligence. And we spent a lot of time before bringing it to this level. And so I'm excited about it.

Well, I think that would be the reason. Your logic is perfect. That would be a reason why Sorrell should be looking at this as an alternative to what they're paying for now. If this is that much better, and it's not going to... Because the sorrel system fails, nobody knows, right? Until the pump backs up and poops in your shower, like I get. But you don't know that the leach... Well, there's a crack in the tank. That's kind of the worst thing, I guess. So this is monitored, and I like that. But I just don't understand. If there's cost, I think sorrel should bear the cost to do the research that you're asking for. Find out if we can put better sewer... capacity septics, where you can't go to sewer because there is no sewer. And if it doesn't beat the moratorium, then I don't know why you would even pursue it unless it gets you out from under the moratorium. I don't know why the advancements don't currently today get you out from that moratorium.

Well, I think the testimony was approved, and I feel the same. I have a system. I'm interested in this. Regardless of the moratorium, it's a better system. But thank you.

I'd like to make sure Sorrell pays for it if it can because we need to maximize that. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, that's all our cards. Yes, you have a question?

So I have a couple comments. I'm going to support this agenda item, not because I know anything about this because you guys didn't come to me, so I have no idea. I have a whole list of questions, and I think that if we go out – if staff can educate us by answering all of the questions that we have, and if you can all be patient, I'm just going to list what my questions are. Um, my first question is how many companies do this? Um, why do we have to hold the DEP permit? Why can't the vendor do it? Because then it seems like we're going to be holding the bag if something goes wrong. Um, and then that's my other question is, are we, are we holding the bag when something goes wrong or when the company goes bust? Uh, I understand that they have a proprietary platform. This is all above my head, so I don't understand it, but I need to know what does that mean for us if the company we pick does go bust. How, I mean, could we just do a pilot program, maybe just a small area rather than just, you know, eventually saying, okay, we're just going to do this County. Why could we do a S a small study area? I don't know. So those are my questions that hopefully will get answered when we, when we get this report back.

Those are really good questions. Um, piggybacking off of that, what would be the typical cost for repairs if it breaks? so that we know we're charging enough to cover all of those incidentals. So, yeah, I think I'm very interested in it, but I don't have any of those dollar numbers as far as the cost and what we're looking at coming back in. So, yeah, because we can't put it on the backs of other taxpayers. But I like the idea.

A lot of those questions are going to be better answered if we take this, this is not committing us to anything. So I think those are really good points and good questions and I'm looking forward to hearing some of those as well. Yes, yes. Eddie, did you want to?

No. Sorry, Commissioner, we're trying to drag up Kathy Wall.

Oh, okay. I saw Eddie was either raising his hand or ducking. I don't know. I DO WANT TO SAY WHILE WE ARE WAITING, I REALLY APPRECIATE THE COMMENTS BY THE COMMISSION BECAUSE IT MAKES ME REALIZE THEY HAVE A GRASP OF JUST HOW SIGNIFICANT THIS IS. THIS COULD BE EPIC, COULD HAVE A HUGE IMPACT. I THINK IN A POSITIVE WAY. THOSE ARE THE QUESTIONS THAT make me realize you realize how big this is and how important so and I think you know I'm looking forward to to having some of those questions answered and a lot of them already have been I've taken a personal interest in this because of you know it's I'm interested in Lagoon I'm interested in in the technology and And Brevard has had many years of challenging. I've had personal decades of fighting the septic issue. Did you have something?

Yes. I'm sorry, Commissioner. It's kind of along the line. Morris and I and Kathy just double-checking. Commissioner Atkinson mentioned they hadn't visited. We met with the on-site folks twice. You were there. Once you vote for this RFP, we're in a cone of silence. So I want to make sure that you can't have on-site visiting you. they can't be visiting us either as staff. So I just wanted to make sure of that. Because it's a little different than a normal RFP. Oh, because it is. Yeah. So I want to make sure.

And once the RFP is released, then once it's – how about when we receive it prior to the – at what point can we start meeting with them? Well, you know what?

Let's have the expert answer that question. Okay. All right.

Typically, I'm sorry, may I?

Yeah, absolutely.

When we've done RFPs, we already kind of know the cost to the county. Do we have any of that already? I'm getting a little, I'm thinking like an accountant. I can't help it right now.

What I envision is a component of this RFP will be price.

Okay.

Because we do not know the price of this system yet.

Okay.

So that will be a component. There will be five or six components, and one of them will be price.

Don't we need to know the cost of maintenance and those types of things? Do you guys have those?

That would also be part of the price.

That will be part of the RFP, so we'll get all the data.

It will be the cost of the capital, the cost to maintain. Those costs will be part of the RFP.

Okay.

Okay, I'm good.

Okay. All right. Do we have any other questions, any discussion? If not, a motion would be in order.

I'll make a motion to advertise for the proposal to the RFP.

I'll second that. There's a motion and a second to advertise for the proposal to the RFP. Any discussion? All those in favor say yay. Yay. Yay. CARES UNANIMOUSLY. THANK YOU SO MUCH. APPRECIATE YOUR TIME. AND I THINK WE SAVED THE BEST OF THE LAST, I GUESS. THAT'S OUR LAST ITEM, I BELIEVE. PUBLIC COMMENT. WE HAVE PUBLIC COMMENT. RICHARD HEFFELFINGER. AND I THINK THIS IS OUR LAST ITEM.

I'M ALWAYS INTERESTED IN THOSE. OKAY. RICK HEFFELFINGER, DISTRICT 1, 2000 JUNIPER DRIVE. I REALLY WANTED TO ADDRESS THIS DURING E1, BUT THERE WAS NO COMMENTS. And E1 is very nice because it says there's a challenge coming if we do a referendum and you guys lose a large portion of real estate tax, right? But that challenge already exists today, and we know that because we did an impact study. And we know we have multiple things that are in serious backlog of potential that we turned out that even an impact fee is not going to save our lives. But those things that we, the impact fee was one possible solution to try to address those issues, right? Because Fire Rescue over the next 10 years has got an $87 million cost estimate that we don't have covered as far as I know, the way that they did that impact study. $19 million for correctional facilities. Libraries have got $18 million. Solid waste doesn't have any because we've handled that in other ways. The worst one is transportation. $3 billion, 561, $3.6 billion worth of backlog that we know we have now. Wait till if this thing gets passed, what happens to that? And we've tried to, over the years, I mean, it's been many, many years, this backlog just didn't happen overnight. I think there's already a solution, and it's already been provided by you during the budget review or the budget workshop process, because you did get some possible solutions that were inside that workshop. You just have not executed any of them. They've been shown to you. How about county and regional transportation system discretionary sales surtax? That could give additional revenue, $25 to $100 million. U.S. government infrastructure district sales tax, $37 million. Public service taxes, $0.09 fuel tax. We talked about fuel taxes. Nobody wanted to take that up. So those have been presented, yet you just haven't taken the bite yet. We're going to have to take the bite, especially if this happens. You need to take the bite now because we've already got a serious backlog over the next 10 years. We're going to have to do something. Not doing anything is no longer an option. And I don't even care if this doesn't pass, this referendum that says you pull $51 million off of you in the first year, I think is one of the numbers. $51 million is nothing compared to the current backlog that we have, that the impact fee showed we had. So, and the staff has actually provided answers. They were in some of those workshops. But nobody grabbed those and said, we need to get our way out of this. And we have, you know, it only gets worse every year you don't do anything. So there were a lot of potential things in that. And the solution is you just need to take those. And instead of saying, no, we don't want to do that, you're going to have to say, we're going to have to do that. Or the deficit continues to grow. It'll grow even faster if this passes. So the action has been on the table for years. You just have to start taking it. And those solutions are already on the table. You just have to enact them. Make a motion to make staff put forward. You've got to tell them to do that. And I think that's the only way you're going to get it done. Thanks.

You're 100% right. I really appreciate what you just said. It's not an easy thing to say, but it's true. It takes courage and commitment and vision for the future, and I have to say I agree with you on that, Rick. Okay, let's go to Board of Reports. County Manager.

I have no report tonight. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

County Attorney. No report, Mr. Chair. Commissioner One.

small items one i was looking into try to put together something for the gas tax that would have to go on the ballot i don't think it would get voted through this year you guys might get it through next year so that's something you guys might want to discuss later put more of a user fee thing onto the ballot because if this goes through i've been trying to find revenues i have been digging and there just isn't any so the only way you're going to be able to pull out of here is you guys create a new revenue source, which is going to be new industry and businesses coming in because our new construction is down right now too. So you've lost all that tax foundation as well. So just throw that out for you guys. But I don't think we have time to get anything in the ballot right now. I don't even think we could with a couple of those things, which might be some game changers. But then you've got to get people to vote for them. So I don't think you're in that atmosphere right now. But you might be next year, because usually people will vote for things when they're in a little bit more of a position of seeing the consequences of what's going on. My other thing is I've been prepping for the P&Z meetings. I've been kind of studying. So I went back, and a couple of our items, I kind of paid attention to what was going on with the advisory board we have. And it's chaos. So I'm going to throw this out to you. I know you guys, I'm thinking you did it as a trial. But I think that board needs to go back to a smaller grouping of maybe two for each of us. Let the alternates be alternates again. So I was going to throw that out if you guys are agreeable to it. Because right now, I can't hardly sit through it. And I can't imagine what those guys are going through with it too. So I'm just going to throw that out and see if you guys were maybe okay with that. And that way we cut government down a little bit too. And they get a little more done when we try to read through that stuff.

So, yeah, I, I've actually gotten complaints from my appointees that they are, they feel ineffective because of the size of the board. And I was actually gonna bring that up in my board report to ask the staff. Go ahead. No, no, no. It's perfectly fine because I I've been hearing my people and, and I agree. So, okay.

So you guys go with, we have County staff start working on it and

Well, I agree. I think we all agree. OK. We're good.

Do you need a motion, or we can just talk later?

You may have a motion already prepared.

I don't. I'll just read my thing. Please go ahead. I'll read my thing. So I said, if the board is agreeable, I'd like to direct staff to bring back an amended ordinance that reduces the number of the members on the P&Z and adjust the core requirements accordingly and provides any other streamlining, efficiencies, modernizations that they might identify. I second it.

It's amazing we both saw the same thing at the same time without talking to each other knowing. All right, motion and a second. All in favor say yay. Yay. Carries unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That's all. That shortens my board report.

Yeah. Okay, District 2. District 3, I think we should just.

I got one other thing, please. So as vice chair, I was invited this year to accompany the EDC to their trip to DC. So I'm seeking board approval before finalizing any travel. And I'm happy for this to come out of the D3 budget. I don't know if I need a motion or just an OK. I don't know how that works.

I will second that. The few times I've gotten to do that, it's really changed my ability to think differently here. So I think it's a great. trip for you to be on and hopefully you get some more businesses back here and some government entities too.

Agreed. And especially our county was so heavily impacted by federal policy. So any discussion? All in favor say yay. Yay. Cares unanimously. Thank you. District 4?

We had, uh, talked about an issue before with, uh, water main for reuse. Um, I just, I just want to tell you that we are talking to St. John's. I know that you, you were talking about that. We've reached out, uh, utility services and I had very good discussion with them. So we're, we're moving forward.

Oh, that's great. Okay. That's good news. We'll save the taxpayer some money. All right. Excellent. Um, and I have, uh, no report. So, um, but we got something. Oh, do you want to do that now? Okay, yes, I should. Yeah, I want to acknowledge that we just lost a giant, a person who really made an impact to our county. It's the former County Administrator Tom Jenkins. And this is a resolution that was read about him when he retired. And I just want to acknowledge that he passed. WE LOST HIM THIS PAST WEEK. I'D LIKE TO BRING THIS RESOLUTION BEFORE THE BOARD AT THE NEXT MEETING AND INVITE, YOU KNOW, ANYBODY WHO WOULD LIKE TO BE A PART OF IT. I JUST WANTED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT TOM PASSED AND REALLY APPRECIATE HIS IMPACT THAT HE MADE HERE IN BEVAR COUNTY. AT ONE POINT, I THINK HE WAS THE LONGEST SERVING COUNTY ADMINISTRATOR. 17 YEARS. 17 YEARS IN ALL OF FLORIDA.

At the time in Florida, yes, he was the longest serving, yes.

So I just wanted to say we're very saddened to learn, and I'll bring this resolution up at the next meeting. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Okay, I think that concludes our items. I'd like to adjourn the meeting.

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